Once every year, no matter what it usual line of business, every publicly owned company becomes a publisher. Men in red suspenders sit down with men in ponytails to cook up ideas. Design boards are trotted in and out of conference rooms, executives dicker over copy, the chairman sits for a flatter-or-fail portrait. Type is set and set again.
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The rationale for a slick yearbook is the boost it can give to the corporate image, but this is a little tricky: What’s primarily promoted (or defended) in the annual report is not the company and its widgets, but the performance of the incumbent management team. That’s why it’s a bummer to work on a report after a bad year. Budgets are cut, concepts turn somber. When earnings disappear, so does the vellum, the extra varnish, the hot photographer. At the very least, a bad-news book has to look like it was produced with an eye to saving money.
The runaway star of this show is the report done for the Chili’s Inc. restaurant chain–14-foot illustrated foldout that features a character called Johnny Chili Seed cavorting among giant shrimp and talking rabbits. According to a spokesman for the restaurant chain, this was the brainchild of Dallas art director Brian Boyd, who was so moved by the Chili’s Inc. story, as told by its executives, that he (in the words of a company vice president) “went berserk” and, in this altered state of consciousness, produced the report. Chilli’s chairman’s message, review of operations, and financials are discreetly printed on the reverse side of the foldout so you never have to see them.
