- CASE STUDY -

East Metropolitan Health Service annual report

I designed the 2021-22 annual report for the East Metropolitan Health Service as a printed book, interactive pdf and website.

Client: East Metropolitan Health Service (Perth, Australia).
Designed whilst at Royal Perth Hospital (part of East Metro Health Service), Perth, 2022.

About the project

 I designed this whilst working at Royal Perth Hospital, which is part of the East Metropolitan Health Service (along with Kalamunda Hospital, Armadale Hospital and St John of God Hospital Midland). It reports all kinds of key financial information, KPI targets and editorial stories and is tabled in the West Australian parliament.

In previous years it had been designed as a printed book and an interactive pdf only, but in addition I was tasked with designing the inaugural, stand-alone website for 2021-22. This was a great opportunity to present static and boring content in a more engaging manner.

My role

I was responsible for designing all three iterations of the annual report – the printed book, interactive pdf and website. I worked closely with my manager and project officer from EMHS through the process, whilst regularly presenting design updates to key stakeholders from Finance, Communications and the Executive Group.

As this was our first year of presenting the annual report as a website, I was in regular contact with our development partners Anthologie, who built the Wordpress CMS. We were able to help shape the final outcome of the templates they designed, to ensure that they met all of EMHS’s needs. The CMS proved to be extremely flexible, with plenty of scope to customise design elements to align all three versions of the annual report.

Our team was also responsible for the outstanding photographic and video content in the annual report. I worked closely with our photographers to utilise existing imagery, as well as help plan new content to shoot. One of my designer colleagues was responsible for finalising the print files right at the end due to time constraints.

Challenges

Transitioning to the web

The most challenging and rewarding part of this job was planning for and implementing the build of the annual report as a website. It required a significant amount of visualising prior to commencing to make sure that it was a seamless experience across the different touch points.  

To that end I designed a new suite of icons which had a much more modern, web-like feel to them. I also redesigned all the buttons and clickable elements in the interactive pdf to have more of a web/app feel. I carried over some of the look of the previous versions to keep consistency but eliminated design elements which I thought would not translate well to a web version. I also knew where we would be able to incorporate animation in the website, so designed the corresponding sections with that in mind.

The primary design work was done in the interactive pdf form of the annual report – this was where most design iteration was done, as well as the version from which we got sign-off from key stakeholders. Whilst designing these as single-page pdf layouts, I had to always keep in mind how each page would look as two-page spreads in a printed form. This was a juggling act and required regular reshuffling of content.

Final thoughts

I really enjoyed the whole process from start to finish, it was a great experience working with a large team across various departments from all the hospitals. It was also rewarding on a personal level to be able to incorporate design elements, artwork, photography and editorial stories relating to Aboriginal staff and patients.

There was quite a deal of anticipation for the web version of the report, and I really relished the challenge that this provided. The finished products were very well received across the entire East Metropolitan Health Service, and I could not be happier with the end result!