The Design of Corporate Annual Reports in London, 1980-2000

年度报告是公司问责和治理的长效机制。经济历史学家认为，英国对财务报告的正式监管始于世纪，当时银行、保险公司和铁路等一些经济重要行业的公司都受到法定报告要求的约束。这些公司公布年度（有时是半年）财务报表，以便董事会既能说明投资者的资本是如何使用的，又能证明支付股息是合理的。然而，直到1967年，年度报告才成为所有英国有限公司的信托要求和公司沟通的主要手段。从那时起，年度报告就包括了一份关于公司在上一个财政年度的活动和财务业绩的综合报告，并被发送给现有和潜在的股东和利益相关者。这是一个使用外部设计服务制作报告的公司数量和打印报告数量都大幅增长的时期。它首先问，在多大程度上年度报告有助于改变英国的政治和经济体系在1980年至2000年之间，其次，在多大程度上设计师帮助提供这种贡献。年度报告在设计史上基本上被忽视了。现有文献的局限性仍然没有受到挑战，特别是那些涉及设计和视觉问题的文献。此外，尽管在20世纪80年代英国的政治和经济变化的意义，尽管年度报告是一个越来越有利可图的业务为英国设计公司在世纪后期的事实，很少有历史的关注，社会变革和公司年度报告的设计之间的关系。尽管一些历史学家和评论家已经认识到，20世纪80年代末市场活动的增加与企业对企业形象重要性的日益自我质疑密切相关，关于年报如何促成1980- 1999年间英国政治和经济结构的变化，2000.大多数有关年度报告的写作都局限于金融和商业领域，并且在设计专家撰写的研究中，分析同样受到限制，而牺牲了年度报告运行的更广泛背景。在设计领域，很少有文章超越成功的想法，面向更广泛的工作背景。本研究旨在开始转移的不平衡领域，从建立文学已经出现，通过提供一个设计历史的方法，结合了历史学家的关键查询，与设计过程的知识。本研究旨在开始填补世纪末对年报设计的认识不足，探讨政治、经济背景、年报与设计者之间的关系。此外，我们希望将实物分析与访谈相结合，为财务和会计史带来新的方法，并对年度报告在设计史上的意义提出新的见解。

The annual report is a long-lived mechanism of corporate accountability and governance. Economic historians have dated the formal regulation of financial reporting in the United Kingdom to the nineteenth century, when companies in some economically significant industries, such as banks, insurance companies and railways, were subject to statutory reporting requirements. These companies published annual (and in some cases semi-annual) financial statements so that boards of directors could both demonstrate how investors' capital had been used and could justify payments of dividends. It was not, however, until 1967 that annual reports became a fiduciary requirement for all UK limited companies and a prime means of corporate communication. Since then, annual reports have included a comprehensive report on a company's activities and financial performance throughout the preceding financial year and have been sent to current and potential shareholders and stakeholders.This research examines annual reports produced by British design companies in the 1980s and 1990s, a period of significant growth in both the number of companies using external design services to produce their report and in the number of reports being printed. It asks firstly, to what extent annual reports contributed to a changing political and economic system in Britain between 1980-2000 and, secondly, to what degree did designers aid in delivering that contribution. The annual report has been largely neglected in histories of design. The restraint of the existing literature remains unchallenged, particularly that which deals with design and visual matters. Furthermore, despite the significance of the political and economic changes in 1980s Britain, and despite the fact that annual reports were an increasingly lucrative business for British design companies within the late 20th century, little historical attention has been given to the relationships between social changes and the design of corporate annual reports. Although some historians and commentators have recognised that the increase in market activity in the late 1980s went hand-in-hand with an increasing self-questioning by businesses of the importance of corporate identity, there is little critical analysis of how annual reports contributed to changing political and economic structures in Britain between 1980-2000.Most writing concerning annual reports has been confined to the fields of finance and business and within the research that has been written by design specialists, the analysis is equally circumscribed at the at expense of the broader contexts in which the annual report operated. There is little writing from within the fields of design that looks beyond ideas of success and towards wider contexts at work. This research aims to begin to shift the imbalance in the fields from which the established literature has emerged by offering a design historical approach that combines the critical enquiry of a historian, with a knowledge of design processes. In asking after relationships between political and economic contexts, annual reports and designers this research aims to begin to fill the lack of knowledge surrounding the design of annual reports in the late twentieth century. Moreover, it is hoped that the combination of object analysis with interviews will bring new methods to histories of finance and accounting and new insights into the significance of the annual report within design history.