Best of CASE District VII Award
 

Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Title of entry: Greatest Hits: UC Berkeley Library Annual Report 2024-2025

About this entry: The UC Berkeley Library’s annual report for fiscal year 2025 had a simple strategic goal: Create a report donors would actually want to read. Our audience — more than 25,000 alumni donors, supporters, and campus partners — responds strongly to storytelling, nostalgia, and a sense of discovery. Traditional annual reports, with dense jargon, muted palettes, and data‑heavy layouts, rarely inspire engagement. We aimed to change that.

To do so, our four‑person communications team built the report around a playful framework: the Library’s “greatest hits” of the year, with inspiration from the Beatles’ iconic album Abbey Road. Each section was anchored by a song title, using it as a thematic doorway into a series of vivid vignettes that demonstrated donor impact. The content strategy prioritized concision, highlighting the Library’s value without overwhelming readers. Language borrowed from the vocabulary of music helped create a cohesive reading experience.

Visual storytelling anchored the piece. A Berkeley‑flavored homage to the Abbey Road cover set the tone, while a square format — evoking an album sleeve — helped the report stand out in the mail. Bold colors and unique fonts sustained surprise throughout.

The result was a report that felt fresh, fun, and unmistakably Berkeley. Donors wrote in unprompted to praise the creativity and delight of the piece, with some reminiscing about their college days. Such responses, uncommon for an annual report, assured us that we had hit the mark in delivering a compelling, brand‑elevating publication that conveyed information in a form supporters genuinely enjoyed.