CHALLENGE

Petrobras, Brazil’s largest company, needed to communicate a changing corporate environment with credibility and accessibility effectively. Each Annual Report package comprised three 200-page volumes, an interactive online version, and a collection of print and digital documents available in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. The challenge was to manage the scale of this project while ensuring governance and producing high-quality communications under strict deadlines, despite disagreements among stakeholders.

ROLE

Project Manager and Creative Director

SOLUTION

We developed an integrated communications system spanning 25+ products across eight months, guided by an 11-month master plan that aligned deliverables with three key areas: Social & Environmental, Financial Analysis & Statements, and Investor Relations. The plan was reviewed and approved by all stakeholder groups, ensuring cross-functional alignment and clear ownership of responsibilities.

Each deliverable followed a structured design process:

• Discovery & Research: Conducted stakeholder interviews, market analysis, and content audits to define strategic goals and ensure alignment with Petrobras’s broader communication objectives.
• Concept & Co-Creation: Produced preliminary sketches and facilitated workshops with each client area, shaping the design direction collaboratively.
• Visual System: Established a unified design language—color palette, grid system, and typographic hierarchy—that guaranteed brand consistency across all formats.
• Editorial Innovation: Selected Freight Text and Sans, high-performance typefaces that reduced page counts by nearly 50%, cutting printing costs and supporting sustainability goals.
• Production & Localization: Standardized templates for efficient tri-lingual production (Portuguese, English, Spanish) and created accessible formats, including a Braille edition.
• Digital Expansion: Launched a fully interactive online report with extended content, complemented by digital discs, newsletters, and internal campaigns to broaden reach.
• Governance & Compliance: Embedded GRI standards and reinforced licensing and copyright compliance in the design workflow, raising Petrobras’s communication governance.

The process was iterative and collaborative, with continuous refinements from first draft to proofreading and final production, ensuring both design quality and strategic clarity.

IMPACT

Efficiency: Type and layout strategy produced a 50× return in printing-cost savings.

Scalability: Established a new visual standard for corporate communications, enabling consistent multi-channel rollouts in subsequent years.

Recognition: UN Global Compact cited Petrobras’s 2006–2007 Social & Environmental Balance as a global benchmark. The reports won multiple awards, including GRI Readers’ Choice Awards (Best Global Report), Investor Relations Magazine (Best Annual Report), and Abrasca (Best Annual Report in Brazil).