Goalkeepers: printed/digital reports

A report to change the world. These vibrant publications chart our remarkable progress in the fight against global poverty.
Client

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Project TypeReportsWebsites
Multiple copies of the Goalkeepers 2018 report laid out side by side over a bright blue background. The cover is titled 'Goalkeepers' with the image of a schoolgirl smiling into the camera.

How many children die before they reach their fifth birthday? How many people struggle below the poverty line? How many still don’t have access to a bank account?

That answer to all of the above questions is the same: far fewer than we could have said two decades ago.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation wanted to create a special report to celebrate the amazing progress that’s been made on the UN global goals over the past 25 years and inspire leaders to keep going.

There are 18 Sustainable Development Goal key indicators covering everything from HIV to maternal mortality between 1990 and projections for where we might be in 2030.

It’s a serious amount of data. So we streamlined our stories into sleek and simple line charts that could deliver an unmistakable message to policy-makers: “We have made amazing progress, but more needs to be done.”

The report would be both printed and digital, so we developed a flexible and familiar visual language for readers. Careful use of vibrant colours showed how much progress could be made – or lost – in the next decade. And annotations called out helpful key points in the story.

The final 40-page booklet was built around these visualizations, pairing them with essays written by Bill and Melinda, and in-depth case studies from experts in the field.

But the report also needed to reach a much wider online audience, so we translated the printed report’s full content into an elegant website, available in seven different languages and on any screen size.

To help promote the launch of the report on social media, we transformed four of the most powerful charts into mini video-stories. On a wider level, we also helped put together the media package for the UNGA’s international market.

‘Goalkeepers: The Stories Behind the Data’ launched in September 2017 and had a huge impact on audiences around the world, being shared by Nobel Peace Prize-winners, agenda-setting media outlets like Fast Company, and of course, Bill and Melinda themselves.

We would return to the work a year later for Goalkeepers 2018, redesigning the report with a fresh emphasis on giving it a human touch.

Four pages taken from the Goalkeepers digital reports on a dark blue background. Each page is a mix of text, imagery and data visualization.
Three screenshots from the mobile version of the Goalkeepers digital reports on a bright teal background. Each image is a mix of text, imagery and data visualization.
A board covered in sketches of visualizations to be used in the Goalkeepers report. Some are black and white, others have splashes of colour.
A selection of different print tests for the printed Goalkeepers report binned to a board. Amongst them are transparent paper testing physical layers of visualization.
Paper sat on a desk testing transparent paper to layer dots onto a visualization. A hand has half turned the transparent paper open like the page of a book, showing yellow paper beneath.
Paper sat on a desk testing transparent paper to layer dots onto a visualization. A hand has half turned the transparent paper open like the page of a book. The page has been turned enough that the yellow paper beneath is clear, it also has a cloud of dots.
Paper sat on a desk testing transparent paper to layer dots onto a visualization. A hand has half turned the transparent paper open like the page of a book. The page has been turned enough that the yellow paper beneath is clear, it also has a cloud of dots.
An animated GIF changing between different double page spreads from the Goalkeepers report. The  first frame shows the front cover which reads 'The Stories Behind the Data 2017'. The subsequent pages are a mix of images, text and data visualization not disimmilar to a magazine layout.
A quote graphic divided between the quote text on the left and an image of Bill and Melinda Gates in a grey tone on the right. The quote is from Melinda Gates and says 'Six million fewer children died in 2016 than in 1990. That's more than the total number of children in France".'

Goalkeepers printed report 2018

Multiple copies of the Goalkeepers 2018 report laid out side by side over a bright blue background. The cover is titled 'Goalkeepers' with the image of a schoolgirl smiling into the camera.
A double page spread from the physical Goalkeepers report. At the top of the two pages are colourful dot plot visualizations. Below them are paragraphs of text.
A double page spread of the printed Goalkeepers report. On the left pageis an image of a buslting groceries market. On the right is the title text 'Ripe for Reinvention' with paragraphs of body copy below it.
A double page spread of the printed Goalkeepers report. On the left page is a line chart above some paragraphs of copy. On the right is a map of Africa with most countries in different shades of pink. There are also bar charts for select countries. These visuals show the extent of extreme poverty in different countryies' populations by 2050.
A double page spread of the printed Goalkeepers report. On the left the page is fully green with the large title 'HIV'. On the right hand side is a map of Africa with Zimbabwe in the same green. A quote below the map reads '61 percent of Zimbabweans are 25 years old or younger, which means that they are entering the age when they are most at risk of infection'.'

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