Objective

Public-affairs research has a house style, and the house style is a photograph of a building with a blue bar across it. It is safe, it is instantly forgettable, and it makes every firm's analysis look like every other firm's.

The subjects here are genuinely difficult to picture: an autumn statement, global political risk, social finance, a leader's speech on Europe. None of them has an object. The job is to find the one image that carries the argument, and then commit to it hard enough that the cover is worth looking at.

Creative response

Publication design and illustration across the research series, in-house. The publisher worked from London, Brussels, Washington and Singapore.

The titles

• Autumn Statement of Intent, December 2012. An illustrated clock with its hands being hauled round on a pulley, which is the whole argument about fiscal timetables in one drawing
• Continental Drift: an analysis of global political risk, December 2012. The globe sitting in the pocket of a roulette wheel
• Challenges and opportunities in social finance in the UK. A tree grown entirely out of institutional icons, its roots forming a jigsaw piece
• Shut up and listen! A guide to social media monitoring. Sixteen framed icons in a grid, and a title that does the positioning by itself
• Eurovision: an analysis of David Cameron's EU speech, January 2013. Big Ben firing arrows across a map of Europe, with the return fire drawn in
• State of the Union 2013, February 2013. The US flag rebuilt with policy icons in place of the stars

The through-line

Every one of these solves the same problem the same way: build an illustration that is the argument rather than decorating it. The clock is about timing. The roulette wheel is about risk. The tree is about where social finance grows from. The flag is about what a union is made of.

That is the difference between a cover and a header image, and it is why a research series from a mid-size agency held its own against firms many times the size.

The titles

• Autumn Statement of Intent, December 2012. An illustrated clock with its hands being hauled round on a pulley, which is the whole argument about fiscal timetables in one drawing
• Continental Drift: an analysis of global political risk, December 2012. The globe sitting in the pocket of a roulette wheel
• Can Germany Lead the Way? Pulling the eurozone back from the brink, Cicero Research. Berlin at sunset, the euro sign set as the sun behind it
• Challenges and opportunities in social finance in the UK. A tree grown entirely out of institutional icons, its roots forming a jigsaw piece
• Shut up and listen! A guide to social media monitoring. Sixteen framed icons in a grid, and a title that does the positioning by itself
• Eurovision: an analysis of David Cameron's EU speech, January 2013. Big Ben firing arrows across a map of Europe, with the return fire drawn in
• State of the Union 2013, February 2013. The US flag rebuilt with policy icons in place of the stars

The through-line

The work