A magazine or annual report people actually finish.
Your annual report is the document your organisation is judged on. Here’s why so few people read it to the end, and what changes when it’s made properly for the screen.
Someone commissioned the writing. Someone edited it, laid it out and argued about the cover. A magazine or annual report represents months of work and real money, and it speaks for the organisation that made it.
Then it’s exported as a PDF, put behind a link and sent to people who will mostly open it on a phone. The design that cost the most is the first thing to break.
The document you’re judged on
For a membership body, the magazine is often the most visible thing members receive all year. For a firm, a charity or a housing association, the annual report is how funders, clients and regulators form a view. These aren’t throwaway documents. They’re signed off line by line because they have to be right.
That care deserves a format that holds up wherever the reader happens to be: on the train, between meetings, or on the sofa with a phone in one hand.
Where readers drop off
The pattern is familiar. A reader opens the link, pinches to zoom, scrolls sideways through a two-column spread, loses their place and closes it. The ones who persist are reading in spite of the format, not because of it.
Page-turner tools wrap the same PDF in an animation and call it digital. A content management system publishes the words and throws the design away. Neither gives you the publication you actually made.
The work was good. It just isn’t in a form anyone can comfortably read.
And because a PDF is a file rather than a page, you have very little idea who opened it, how far they got, or which piece landed.
What an Edition changes
An Edition is your magazine or report rebuilt from the same source files as the print version, as real text that reflows for whatever screen it’s read on. Your typography, colour and pacing carry across. The layout adapts to the screen rather than shrinking to fit it.
Readers move from one article to the next without losing their place. Figures can be explored rather than squinted at, and video or audio can sit alongside the text where it adds something.
It also becomes something you can point at: one link that works in an email, a social post, a signature or a QR code on the printed copy. Hosted on our version-controlled system, a figure that has to be restated after publication can be corrected without reissuing a file or sending a new link, and every version is kept so you can show what was published and when.
Because it’s real, structured text, it’s open to everyone too, designed and tested to WCAG 2.2 AA.
Starting with one edition
You don’t need to change how you make the publication. We work from what you already produce: ideally the InDesign or Affinity package, or the press-ready PDF if that’s all there is. Your editorial process stays the same, and so does your print run.
- Your layout and typography kept, not poured into a template.
- One link that works on every device, in email, social and print.
- Corrections without reissuing the file, with every version kept.
- An Edition you own outright and can host anywhere.
Most Editions go live within two weeks of us receiving the files. The first year of hosting is included, and you’re free to take your Edition and host it yourself whenever you like.
Send us what you published last time and we’ll tell you what it could be. If the honest answer is that a PDF is fine for what you need, we’ll say so.
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