Cleveland-based Enspace added a belly band to the S.A.W. annual report when they were told there was extra room on the press sheet, says art director Jennifer Visocky O’Grady. Budget limited the cover to one color, but the band adds a welcome punch of color.

Uniting the dissimilar
Solutions at Work, or S.A.W., is the nonprofit partner of the Cuyahoga Board of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, the largest employer of people with disabilities in Ohio. Cleveland-based Enspace, Inc. has a history of community involvement and actively pursued a creative partnership with the nonprofit that has lasted for five years.

Despite their history of working together, Enspace still faced the challenge of communicating important aspects of the nonprofit. “S.A.W. is simultaneously a human services provider and a business entity,” says Ken Visocky O’Grady, principal at Enspace. “This single marketing piece needed to reach a business audience that focuses on numbers, efficiency ratings, and cost—as well as communicate the life-changing individual opportunities generated each working day. With every annual that we design for S.A.W., we are challenged with shifting a paradigm and presenting the extensive abilities and strengths of the disabled public.”

The counterpoint between the visual background and a focus on numbers was something that developed after sketching potential page design. “We wanted to show the numbers in some sort of abstract context, something that may not make a complete connection until the captions at the bottom of the page are read,” says Visocky O’Grady.

“The cover is always the last thing we design on a project like this,” he notes. “After designing the narrative and the rest of the annual, we wanted to do something that would be in sharp contrast with the large images and fields of text. Also, our budget dictated that we print the cover 1/0 [one-color on one side], so we were limited in what we were able to do. That said, we thought we should focus on the title and the full name of S.A.W. with a simple typographic treatment.”

A miniature mockup of the report shows the design concept coming into view. Changes are often made at this stage, before production begins.	Because S.A.W. was experiencing changes, Enspace used dramatic photos to capture the positive energy behind the not-for-profit’s transformations.