Ah Haa School for the Arts

Overview

Creating an engaging annual report for an arts non-profit that more than just the board members would read.

Ah Haa School for the Arts has an existing brand. For the 2022 annual report they hired me to turn their financial report into an object that highlighted their robust programming, community involvement, and vibrancy, while also demonstrating to stakeholders how they put their money to use.

2022/2023

The Challenge

Annual reports are dull and oftentimes overlooked objects. Turning one into a public facing object that was hopefully-enjoyable to page through was critical to the project's brief. Working within their brand guidelines while needing to create a system for something their brand wasn't designed to do, a whole book, was what drew me to the project in the first place. Ah Haa has a strong brand but before this they'd never used and stretched it into a longform, complex, and multi-dimensioned project.

Annual Reports are dull and often times overlooked objects, turning one into a public facing object that was hopefully-enjoyable to page through was critical to the projects brief. Working within their brand guidelines while needing to create a system for something their brand wasn't designed to do a whole book was what drew me to the project in the first place. Ah Ha has a strong brand but before this they'd never used and stretched it into a longform, complex, and multi-dimensioned project.

The Solution

Using their brand colors and fonts I created an integrated system for the book. New typographic elements, custom data visualizations, and hand-drawn illustrations all had to be made from the ground up. Working with the Executive Director we had to ideate how they wanted their data to be visualized in the first place, make sure it fit within the brand's guidelines, or create new ones, and last but not least make sure it was clear and easy to read.

Using their brand colors and fonts I created an integrated system for the book. New typographic elements, custom data visualizations, and hand-drawn illustrations all had to be made from the ground up. Working with the Executive Director we had to ideate how they wanted their data to be visualized in the first place, make sure it fit within the brands guidelines, or create new ones, and last but not least make sure it was clear and easy to read.

The Result

The book screamed Ah Haa. Most importantly it wasn't just the oftentimes tedious and necessary information a non-profit has to create but the celebration of a dynamic, living and breathing, organization that excels when its classrooms are full of noisy kids with paintbrushes. The framework which we created greatly expanded what their brand was capable of. The organization was able to clearly communicate and celebrate who they were while being able to inform and educate their community on what it takes each day to keep the lights on.