The Annual Report
The cover, featuring the blue ridge mountains and what’s left of my running shoes after 489 miles.
An Annual Report on a year of unemployment? Could there be anything dumber to share on LinkedIn?!?
Maybe not. But if last year was about anything, it was about honesty and taking risks. And the truth is that in 2021, I did some things I was really proud of.
I stopped dreaming about living in nature and did it, moving to a small town in Virginia after 22 years in my hometown of Chicago.
I showed up at 6 AM to follow the Prolyfyck Run Creww on a five mile run through historically Black neighborhoods in Charlottesville, Virginia. Then I did it 77 more times.
And, I learned to make, share and sell my own artwork - well enough to get into my first exhibition.
I was privileged to do a “gap year” by choice. But mine was still awfully full. And it bothered me that all I would have to show for it was a blank spot on my resume.
Besides, I was determined to be different. I have always been dismissive of my accomplishments. Five minutes tops for celebration, then on to the next thing. But constantly chasing the next win had left me exhausted and empty. What would it feel like to give myself credit for a change?
Treacherous, at first. I loved the idea of a mock annual report but it still involved admitting I was unemployed. And the first draft was awful—rambling, insistent and overly personal. Annoyed with the copy, I started working on the visuals.
My first instinct was to use free or nearly-free software, in keeping with the whole jobless/DIY theme. Procreate is a digital illustration app for iPad available for just $10.
An early cover design in Procreate, featuring a “logo” for the year.
Procreate was great for mocking up pages and playing with different layouts.
An early spread describing our move to Charlottesville from Chicago.
Swapping out images within a layout, however, was a nightmare and not really what Procreate was meant for. Same with rearranging blocks of text. So I bit the bullet and bought a subscription to Adobe Illustrator.
The other critical choice I made was to simplify. I was beginning to understand that the sooner I started using text I was happy with instead of placeholders, the faster the design evolved, getting cleaner and more focused along the way. So I went back to the copy and distilled it down into three succinct stories. For each, I forced myself to articulate the one thing I most wanted readers to know.
This was tough. Each vignette represented months of work. Part of me wanted “credit” for all of it. But I knew that realistically, a glance might be all I would get from a prospective reader. The design had to get the point across in just one look.
So I cracked open Lisa Graham’s Basics of Design and turned to the chapter on emphasis. And went back to the drawing board.
Sketches reflecting emphasis as well as invaluable advice from my friend, designer Jim Efstathiou.
Working in Illustrator. Precise placement and vector-based illustrations resulted in a cleaner, more professional look.
Immediately the project felt better. Before, I’d been trying to knock it out by shamelessly ripping off layouts from other, truly “corporate” reports I’d found online. But making my own was essential, not just for it to be a true design project but to make sure the words, numbers and visuals worked in harmony to express the same thing. And yes, I’m a graphic design newbie. But I was still pretty pleased with the result.