A blueprint for story-driven impact reporting

Earlier this year, WHEB Asset Management approached us to design their 2024 fund report. They came to us with a challenge, to evolve their award-winning impact reporting into a more emotionally resonant, interactive, and future-facing experience.

An Impact Investor who's raised the bar for years

WHEB has long been a standout in the world of sustainable investing. Over the past 16 years, they've built a reputation not just for authentic impact, but for a level of transparency that many in finance still shy away from. They're known for doing the work, and showing it. Their 2024 General Report even won an award for best overall communications. So why change anything?

Because WHEB wanted to lead the conversation on what impact reporting looks like in the investment space, not just in what they say, but how they say it. With their recent acquisition by Foresight, WHEB were entering new terrain. How to stay true to their brand whilst starting to align with a larger identity. How to speak to both long-time stakeholders and curious new readers. And how to do justice to a year in which progress looked less like linear success, and more like navigating uncertainty.

“This was our 11th Impact Report and Driftime helped up level it, not only with creative and interactive elements, but also by working with us to design the narrative around a story arc to take readers on a journey.”

Susie Winstanley

Marketing Manager at WHEB

Setting the tone through storytelling

Managing Director Seb and Marketing Manager Susie came to us with open minds and big ambitions. Right from the start, we dove into collaborative storytelling workshops. These sessions helped us define the emotional arc of the year, a journey of holding course, adapting strategies, and learning in real time.

2024 was a challenging year across the impact investment landscape. Yet WHEB made remarkable progress on their stewardship strategy, showing how long-term thinking can carry through even during headwinds. Together, we framed the report as an honest, reflective narrative of how impact evolves in complexity.

At first, the idea of blending a story-like narrative and data felt a little counterintuitive. But it quickly clicked. The WHEB team began producing prose that added emotional texture to the numbers. The result is a report with personality, grounded in facts, and human in tone.

Design that creates both structure and flow

Design intentionally followed our initial narrative structure, using layout and pacing to create space for reflection, focus and depth. With long-form content and a wealth of data to visualise, pages could have easily felt dense and overwhelming. We made the decision to weave data into the story, and create an annexe at the end of the report for detailed graphs and further reading.

The WHEB brand came with an expansive colour palette, with tones inspired by elements of nature. We used these colours to create a visual language that situated the reader within chapters, giving readers a visual sense of continuity and pace.

Full-bleed imagery grounded the report in majestic nature photography, a visual thread in WHEB's identity. This time, we layered in subtle movement using short video backgrounds. Still scenes that shift gently, echoing the living, breathing ecosystems WHEB is working to protect.

We knew that not every reader would approach the report the same way. Some want the highlights, others want the deep dive, so we designed for flexibility. An interactive summary page gives readers a quick overview and direct links to relevant sections. Whilst a sticky navigation bar, styled to mirror WHEB's site, lets readers jump to any section from anywhere in the report.

Evolving within constraints

Some elements needed to stay familiar. WHEB's data visualisation formats have been consistent over many years, embedding consistency and fostering reader trust. Rather than overhaul them, we refined them. Small adjustments in colour coding and layout created clarity and cohesion without disrupting legacy expectations.

One of the most exciting updates was around WHEB's theory of change, which had recently been refined. We helped translate this into a more intuitive and brand-aligned diagram, visually wrapping around the WHEB logo to anchor their role at the heart of systems change.

In terms of format, we opted for a digital report that prioritised interactivity and enabled us to embed subtle movement in terms of video content. Yet we also created an interactive PDF download for those readers who prefer a familiar or offline format.

Impact reporting as a chance to evolve your brand

In a shifting landscape of sustainability regulation (from the UK's SDR to the EU's CSRD), impact reporting is fast becoming a non-negotiable for businesses of all sizes. But rather than treat it as a box-ticking exercise, WHEB saw it as a chance to tell the deeper story of their work, showing their values of transparency and stewardship in action.

Impact reporting is an opportunity to sharpen how your brand shows up in a more impact-literate world. Whether you're preparing for compliance or pioneering a new way of communicating purpose, we're here to help you shape the story, structure the data, and bring the journey to life in a way that's not only clear and easy to navigate but emotive and enjoyable to read.

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