It's not everyday we see something designed by a city council and think 'ooh, that's nice' – but this is one of those days. Manchester City Council's in-house design team, m-four, sent us this just-under-A4 booklet which reviews Manchester's Valuing Older People (VOP) Board.

Valuing Older People is an organisation that was set up six years ago to give Manchester's older residents a voice. This  Sidelines To Centre Stage report has been created to celebrate the work of the VOP network since its inception.

"Considering the subject matter, it seemed only natural to make people the focus of this document," says Chris Jennings, the designer on the project. "Rather than produce a traditionally dry corporate report, we felt it was essential to bring the facts to life in a story that really did justice to the valuable work of this organisation," he continues. "Above all, we were keen to move away from typical ‘annual report' style design involving clichéd images, blocks of colour and ugly typography."

"We were able to convince the client to abandon their photography in favour of striking portraits [by Mike Pilkington] of actual VOP board members," adds Jennings on m-four's approach to the design of the report. "The client also readily bought into our idea of a design based on a traditional book of poetry that was both clean and elegant."

m-four.com