Meet the client.
Economist Impact (EI) is part of the Economist Group, and its focus is on inspiring and empowering positive change. Through expert analysis and intelligent debate, they help organisations around the globe work towards a better future for all. EI’s outlook and ethos make them a perfect partner for NWC Design, and we’ve proudly worked with them for almost a decade now.
Microsoft is one of the biggest technology companies in the world, with a mission to give people and organisations the tools they need to achieve more. Sustainability is one of their core values, with a goal to become carbon negative and water positive and to achieve zero waste by 2030. By teaming up with EI on this project, their research and resources could help other organisations do the same.
Our challenge.
Economist Impact and Microsoft joined forces to produce a report on Scoring Decarbonization Progress – detailing how companies across four different industries are reducing emissions. They called on us to help bring it to life.
For this project to be a success, EI needed us to make a huge set of benchmarking data look and feel creative, without compromising on clarity. 21 assets were required in total, and they needed to be creatively consistent.
EI also needed to share early creative drafts with Microsoft prior to the completion of the research phase, making the turnaround even tighter. But they knew they could count on us to get the job done on time and to the highest quality.
Our approach.
We’ve worked with both EI and Microsoft plenty of times before, so we know their brand guidelines inside and out. After receiving the brief, we called the design and editorial teams to discuss the context of the project, desired outcomes, early research findings, plus the clients’ overall aims.
Next, we drew up creative options for the ‘brand’ of the project and creative visualisations of the data elements. After presenting this to the client, stakeholder feedback was received and implemented. We did as much work as we could before signed-off content was supplied to allow us to get ahead of the tight timeframe and complete everything on schedule.
As always, the US-based team was a pleasure to work with, and we stayed in close contact throughout the project via email and video calls to ensure a smooth and collaborative process.
Our work.
When we were done, the client had a comprehensive suite of assets that could be used across all platforms.
We produced:
- A full report (73 pages)
- A summary report (17 pages)
- 4 industry briefings (17 pages each)
- 10 industry scorecards
- 4 social cards
- An infographic
- Graphic elements for use by the client across their digital content hub
The impact.
We passed the assets on to EI, who ultimately delivered them to Microsoft – improving EI’s reputation and relationship with the tech giant. With a comprehensive set of high-quality educational materials at their disposal, Microsoft could continue to create awareness around sustainability in both technology and business.