In 1992, Zumtobel decided that its annual report needed livening up in order to raise its profile both with customers of its high-end lighting and its business partners. Creative consultant Otto Riewoldt suggested using the report as a vehicle for contemporary graphic design and art.

The result has been a series of extraordinary publications. Mikhail Anikst, Italo Lupi and Neville Brody were among the designers commissioned – and given free rein – over the first reports in the series. Javier Mariscal, Gert Dumbar and Stefan Sagmeister also designed reports in the 90s (CR subscribers can read our feature on the series from our February 1999 issue in the CR Archive), while artists such as Anish Kapoor and Olafur Eliasson have also contributed.

For the 2017-18 report, the 27^th in the series, Zumtobel has returned to Sagmeister, or, more accurately, to Jessica Walsh, Sagmeister’s partner in the New York studio.

Walsh has art directed 20 “typographical and socially critical A4 artistic cards” which come with the report. Each explores “the artistic interplay between light and shadow” and features a different phrase, “encouraging readers to pause and reflect,” Zumtobel says.

You can find more on the Zumtobel annual reports (including pictures of the whole series) here.

More information on the CR Archive, a digital archive of every print issue of CR from 1980 to 2018, available to all subscribers, here