TORONTO—There was a time, not long ago, when a design firm could do healthy business by focusing most of its energies on annual reports. Although the web has changed that, the annual report is still the communications foundation for a number of organizations, including Casey House, a HIV/AIDS hospice in Toronto, which recently hired Toronto-based Zync Communications to design its reports for 2009 and 2010.

Marko Zonta, principal and creative director at Zync, agrees that annual reports, in general, are “getting a lot smaller and the budgets are getting a lot smaller.” But for an organization like Casey House, “the annual report is their main communications vehicle. All their donations come through that piece and it’s the only printed piece they do.”

With the 2009 report, which will be released at the Casey House annual general meeting in June, Zonta says Zync is looking to “tell a story” about the different kinds of people — volunteers, doctors, donors — who keep Casey House up and running. “We want it to be clean and nicely presented but also to have a lot of personality,” Zonta says. 

To bring “personality” to the report, Zync is using photographs of the people of Casey House, taken by one of the organization’s volunteers. “We want to pull on heartstrings and tell that human story." Contact: www.zync.ca