The 2020 annual report of the Austrian Automobile, Motorcycle and Touring Club (ÖAMTC) serves as a photo album cum documentary of the operations of the company during an arduous year.
The cover is white with a faintly visible list of words on the right side, including ‘confidence’, ‘joy’ and ‘goals’. Slightly random perhaps, until one realizes that some of these words are carried forward into the pages of the report (see pages 7, 11 and 56).
Photographs are greyscale and people-centric, captured artfully. The laptop screen in the opening image on entering the report consists of faces of the people whose stories will appear later in the report.
The short address from the heads of the company expresses their gratitude to their 4000 employees, who met all the challenges of the year head on. This report is dedicated to them.
The contents pages display an interesting composition of photos, once again focusing on those same faces with their corresponding locations within the report (pages 8-9). This creates a sense of curiosity.
Stories from employees are presented documentary-style and in relation to the pandemic; how each person was able to add value to the company by adapting to the ‘new normal’.
Readers are shown visuals of the occasional mask, elbow bumps, home offices and even how parents managed with kids. Many direct quotes by employees – from managers to flight rescuers to accountants – are coupled with details on the new routines they had to adjust to, due to the collision of personal life and work life.
Most certainly an apt means of saying thank you.
The only element of colour is the familiar yellow of the brand, which highlights some areas of text and even this is used minimally. Data representation is also grey and white, with yellow highlights to make the figures more striking. Even the map of Germany showing ÖAMTC’s many locations (pages 42-43) is drawn out creatively against a photograph to show how much proximity to their members matters to them.
