Annual Report Design for Insight Prison Project

A friend of mine connected me with the staff of Insight Prison Project several months ago. IPP needed an annual report and wanted it to accomplish several goals. It should inform supporters of their programs and financial status while additionally celebrating the accomplishments of the program members. Here’s a description of their mission and goals taken from their website:

Since 1997, the Insight Prison Project has been dedicated to reducing recidivism rates and improving public safety by conducting highly-effective in-prison rehabilitation programs that provide prisoners with the tools and life skills necessary to create durable change. Working in partnership with San Quentin State Prison, IPP conducts 19 weekly classes involving more than 200 prisoners. Our classes focus on preparing the men to become responsible and productive members of the community when they leave prison.

There was a limited budget for the project so the annual report was printed in black and white. This could have been a problem – annual reports often demand color – but the black and white photos I was provided with were extremely powerful and provided a story in themselves. The photos show program participants doing group work and in meditation.

The content required a serious design so I chose to provide a more corporate framework and let the photos and words from program participants appear without too much design interference. The program’s goal is personal clarity – the design responds to this goal by providing a clarity of design.

IPP Annual Report 2009_2010

Rent that e-Book!

MIT Press now lets you rent a book. Is this model a more “honest” approach to retailing e-books? Downloading a book on Kindle usually means that you’ve purchased that title. But the Amazon Cloud might part and decide to remove your treasured and annotated copy from your Kindle. Hmmmm. Would they actually come to my home and remove a book from my bedside table? I don’t think so.

It appears that I’m actually renting a book from Kindle, not buying it. But what if I want to save certain passages in the Kindle book or the MIT book rental? I’m beginning to imagine lines of people at copying machines with their e-book readers making hard copies of the pages they don’t want to lose. Will I need to purchase a pocket-size e-book reader copier?

Check out the story by Nazlah Salam or visit MIT Press.