From Data to Dialogue: Designing a Best-in-Class Impact Report for PANGAIA
Inspired by The Economist’s data-driven storytelling, this article explores turning technical sustainability insights into a compelling, magazine-style narrative.
A Bold and Ambitious Brief
PANGAIA is a materials science company dedicated to developing environmentally positive solutions through premium lifestyle products. By merging science, design, and technology, they aim to drive innovations that benefit the planet, creating products that address critical environmental challenges in the industry.
Each year, they release an Impact Report, a comprehensive document detailing their environmental and social initiatives, tracking their progress toward sustainability goals and accountability. Their impact report is closely watched, serving as a barometer for the fashion industry.
They sought to create a report that improved on the previous year’s edition, and offered a fresh, engaging perspective on their core sustainability mission. Industry impact reports can often be heavy on data, and difficult to read, but PANGAIA wanted something that could be understood by all, with plenty of “aha” moments for the reader, a bit like a good Attenborough documentary.
The main design goal was to transform complex data into a compelling narrative, effective both online and in print.
The design of the impact report needed to effectively support the journalism it provided, helping illustrate key stories from contributors that focused on advancing sustainability.
The Playback Workshop: Setting a Unified Vision
To kick off, I took time to analyse the brief from PANGAIA, forming initial assumptions and researching other impact reports to understand the landscape. My goal was to create a clear and engaging presentation that would spark conversation and ensure full alignment on the report’s content and aesthetic. This report was authored by eight different contributors from different departments within PANGAIA, so consistency in tone of voice and visual language was going to be one of my biggest design challenges.
I led a playback workshop with key contributors, where we reviewed and refined the brief together.
This “playback” allowed everyone space to discuss, interject, and explore ideas in a structured setting with visual prompts to drive clarity. By the end, we left with a shared direction, a clear vision of success, and a sense of each person’s role in achieving it.
Defining the Audience and Shaping Perceptions
During this workshop, we identified seven key audiences for the impact report. Our diverse team helped ensure that all perspectives were considered. We distilled these groups into three core reader types, and created a “before” and “after” attribute for each, which refers to how we would like their perception to shift after reading the impact report.
Fashion Consumers
Before: Curious, with a general understanding of the brand
After: Educated, validated, and trusting of the brand
Business Leaders
Before: Open-minded, with some knowledge
After: Impressed, motivated to share the report within the industry
Investors
Before: Curious, sceptical, or open-minded
After: Inspired, and reassured
The audience insights highlighted just how varied the report’s impact needed to be. The investor segment, in particular, reinforced the commercial value of strong design, showing how trust and business credibility rely on it. With fashion consumers likely to scan for highlights, business leaders looking for depth, and investors focusing on data-driven insights, the storytelling had to be layered to engage each perspective effectively. This clarity of purpose became essential in making the report both accessible and impactful.
Defining the Objectives & Gaining Creative License
Next, we clarified the larger objectives for the impact report, ensuring they were concise and aligned with the project’s purpose:
- Provide Accountability: Ensure transparency on our progress and challenges from the previous year.
- Brand-Building Tool: Position the Impact Report as a key asset in reinforcing PANGAIA’s leadership in sustainability and “Responsible Innovation.”
It was impressive for me to see from a c-level that the impact report was being considered as a “brand building tool” and made me understand that the stakeholders really valued the power of design. This also meant that PANGAIA were happy for me to take this as an opportunity to evolve their brand through my own interpretation of their guidelines; offering me extensive creative license.
Auditing the Previous Report for Insights & Design Opportunities
An audit of the previous impact report organised findings into “positives,” “areas for improvement,” and “design opportunities.” This structure clarified strengths and highlighted areas for enhancement. Initial analysis on a shared Miro board allowed asynchronous team input, later distilled into a concise slide deck. The Miro approach creates a space for the wider team to add their thoughts at any point during the project.
We identified 13 design opportunities from the audit, three of which stood out as key drivers for the project:
- Enhance Visual Hierarchy and Breathing Space
Leverage negative space to improve message clarity and reduce visual clutter. - Subtle Visual Tropes
Move away from the previous report’s explicit skeuomorphic design (reminiscent of a filo-fax) in favour of more implicit cues. - Consistency in Layouts and Diagrams
Standardise page layouts and data visualisations, which had previously varied in style and used overly bright colours, making the information difficult to interpret.
Content wise, with multiple contributors authoring different chapters, each with unique tones, it became clear that consistent data visual language was essential for the reader to have a compelling reading experience; just like reading an article from The New Yorker or The Atlantic.
Often, contributors assume that the designer’s role is merely to “lay it out” — a misconception that can dilute the effectiveness of the report. In hindsight, emphasising the need for collaborative editing during initial discussions would have helped clarify that creating an elevated report demands layers of editing and refinement, aligning each page to convey sharp, distinct messages that resonate beyond the usual impact report format.
Beyond Fashion: Learning from Benchmarking
To set a high standard for PANGAIA’s impact report, I conducted a benchmarking exercise across industries, collecting reports from brands like Tesla and Apple. The goal was to look beyond fashion to uncover innovative approaches to impact reporting, as often, the most inspiring ideas emerge outside one’s immediate industry. We also had some aspirational fashion brands such as Prada, with Nike investing a lot into sustainability and Stella McCartney being founded on sustainability principles.
Tesla and Apple proved especially valuable, not only for their clear, accessible presentation but also for their approach to impact reporting as a deliberate brand-building exercise — demonstrating authentic commitment rather than treating it as a compliance task.
Tesla uses imagery of it’s cars alongside charts, which helps create a clear link between the product and the data and impact behind it; a technique we used later in our own impact report.
This type of graphic approach helped with the “layered” storytelling for our different users. A fashion consumer could easily make a mental leap from “this hoodie I bought has a positive environmental impact as shown in the chart it’s next to”, with an investor being able to see how their investments are paying off in terms of real product production.
Visualising Data with Precision: Lessons from The Economist
To set a high bar for data visualisation in PANGAIA’s impact report, I presented the team with an exemplar: The Economist. While not always the most visually elaborate, The Economist’s data visuals are crafted to deliver a precise message, enhancing narrative rather than simply decorating the page. Most impact reports default to static charts that leave readers to interpret meaning on their own; our goal was to deliver visuals where each chart communicated a single, clear takeaway.
Drawing on resources like this video from Analyst Academy, I broke down three principles from The Economist’s approach:
- Simplicity: Strip away unnecessary elements that detract from clarity.
- Chart-Message Matching: Ensure each chart aligns with the story we want to tell, designed to be understood in seconds.
- Guiding Interpretation: Use titles and subtitles to steer readers toward the key insight.
To align the team, I dissected the anatomy of these charts and highlighted how we’d adapt this structure in PANGAIA’s report. Although it meant additional rounds of refining content to distill each visual’s message, the team embraced this effort, knowing it would set PANGAIA’s impact report apart with a compelling, journalistic quality.
With one of our design opportunities from our earlier audit being “Consistency in Layouts and Diagrams” whereby we specifically called out that previous reports “used overly bright colours, making the information difficult to interpret”, I thought the controlled use of colour to reinforce the message was also valid to share with the team, through this “Infographics use of colour” slide:
I concluded this section by demonstrating how to deliver the data for me in the most useful way by specifying that each piece of data must come with a:
- Chart title
E.g. Middle of the pack materials dominate PANGAIA products in 2023. - Chart subtitle title
E.g. The different material types used within products at PANGAIA.
This forced different contributors who were giving me the data to really consider how to tell the story before giving me a lot of unfiltered data to artwork into one of the static charts we were trying to avoid.
I asked them to use a blue arrow to highlight the key piece of data I should be focussing on as a designer that reinforces the key message, and ultimately would be the one the reader needed their attention drawing to.
To show the power of these design techniques in combination, I used a chart from the previous years impact report alongside a chart I had designed using The Economist design principles with PANGAIA brand colours and placed them side by side.
A clear design learning from this project is that Templates are your friend: PANGAIA had 40 pieces of data they needed to be visualised within 20 days all from different contributors, alongside a digital landing page for the impact report, and art working and visual design for other elements. Without this structured template — this would not have been possible to achieve in the time.
Different contributors are not mind readers, and so working with them early on to define the key messages and give them consistent templates to work within makes it much easier to compile the final report and artwork data.
Defining a New Visual and Editorial Tone
We created a “from previous report to future report” list to guide a shift toward a more sophisticated tone. Moving away from last year’s playful, colourful style, we outlined a cleaner, more refined visual and editorial approach that would establish PANGAIA as a serious leader in sustainable materials science.
By aligning on a cohesive voice and streamlined design, we aimed to create an impact report that captured the brand’s evolution and maturity.
Image Treatment: Micro and Macro Perspective
To reinforce PANGAIA’s core identity as a material sciences company, we leaned into the theme of “micro and macro” imagery.
This approach highlighted both the small scale tactile details of innovative materials and the huge scale of PANGAIA’s mission. We visually showed how these two things were closely interlinked. We used an inset image format, pairing close-up shots that emphasised texture with wider frames for context, creating a visual connection between material innovation and the finished product.
A Typographic Nod to an Aspirational Innovator
We selected the serif typeface Cigars to anchor PANGAIA’s identity in fashion but also evoke the bold and simple tone of early Apple ads. This felt like a key departure from the sans typography in use across PANGAIA’s digital touch-points, and a brand building tool to set the Impact Report apart as something “special” that comes around as a limited edition once a year.
Titles were designed to feel cinematic and bold, using only one typeface without a typographic pairing; instead relying on size and weight variations to create a sophisticated visual hierarchy. This was a subtle nod to Steve Jobs, who was an innovator in his field, in a way PANGAIA is continuously innovating in material sciences with a clear mission and vision. Through the typography we aimed to replicate Jobs’ principles of “clarity, simplicity, and quality.”
Image Treatment: Blur Effect for a Tech-Forward Look
Drawing inspiration from the technology sector’s visual trends, we noticed a growing use of blur effects, as seen in companies like Apple, which lends a sense of depth and modernity to digital interfaces. ChatGPT insights helped validate the use of blur as a design trend that subtly signals a connection to technological innovation. By introducing this effect in selective imagery, we aimed to position PANGAIA as a leader at the intersection of fashion and material technology.
Chapters and Social Vernacular for Bite-Sized Content
With the online report serving as an entry point to the in-depth print version, we adopted a social media vernacular for visually concise, bite-sized content. Instagram stories and reels, Tiktok and Youtube Shorts were all strong reference points with their portrait content. We also researched news apps, such as Skys News app with it’s horizontally scrolling overflow of stories to inspire our own layout.
The editorial took on a journalistic tone, with poetic, attention-grabbing titles. This social-inspired approach strongly influenced the final online chapter layout, creating a cohesive style across versions.
“Quietly Playful” Celebration of Impact Statistics
Guided by a “quietly playful” design principle, we showcased key impact statistics in a news-ticker style reminiscent of a stock exchange — lively but modernised, avoiding skeuomorphic design. This dynamic element aimed to bring energy to the online version, addressing prior feedback that the previous edition felt overly static.
Reflections on a Quietly Playful, Boundary-Pushing Impact Report
The final product met our primary objectives: providing accountability by reporting progress and challenges, and positioning the Impact Report as a core brand-building tool that reinforces PANGAIA’s leadership in sustainability and “Responsible Innovation.”
By adhering to our design principles — “quietly playful,” “boundary-pushing,” and “elevated” — we crafted a report that felt dynamic and accessible, with data visualisation playing a pivotal role in shaping an engaging, narrative-driven experience for a wide audience.
The process underscored the importance of taking the team through each design phase, building foundational elements like templates for collaborative use, and setting realistic timelines.
Ultimately, the report has earned its place as a celebrated brand asset, with printed copies shared among investors and customers alike, underscoring its value and impact.
For more of my design projects, please check out my website.
