I created a designed PDF of a research findings report for the Learning and Work Institution, for a presentation to the client and wider group. You can see the published report on their website.
There were 3 things that I wanted to achieve as part of this project:
- Create an appealing and easy to read report that reflected the hard work done in the research and easily communicated it’s outcomes
- Create an interpretation of the brand guidelines that would work well for this project
- Provide the Institute with a re-usable InDesign document, pre-loaded with page templates and styles that we used (every time they created a report, they needed the designer to create and set up a new file with the same brand styles)
To reduce the budget, we used the Institute’s own branding to style the report.
Learning and Work Institute is an independent policy and research organisation focused on lifelong learning and better work, and Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority asked them to evaluate the first year of its Youth Guarantee Trailblazer, (one of eight pilots set up across England to help young people into education, employment and training). The research behind it drew on in-depth interviews, focus groups with young people, survey data and monitoring data covering 1,108 young people across 27 interventions and 30 delivery partners. The finished report needed to carry a great deal of evidence while still being something people would want to read.
I designed the report in collaboration with the L&W team, and the guiding idea was to give the reader a clear route through a long document. Across 106 A4 pages and seven chapters, a contents page and full-bleed photographic section dividers act as way-markers, with information and data grouped so that it was easy to find at a glance – this was very handy for the review process!
A lot of the work was in making the evidence readable. The survey and monitoring data became a consistent family of charts and a regional map, and the ideas that are hardest to explain in words, such as how the programme’s services fit together and the conditions it needs for wider change across the system, were each drawn as a diagram. The case studies of young people and delivery partners sit on their own tinted pages so their voices stand apart from the analysis, including one young person’s journey through the programme, laid out as a diagram in his own words.
L&W shared the findings at a webinar in September 2026, and they were kind enough to thank J4G Design for the design in the report’s acknowledgements.
The most important thing is that the client is happy, we produced a great report and they got a template to speed up the process next time!
