Every year, Germania Insurance produces a strategic plan guide that recaps the progress in the previous year and outlines plans for the upcoming year. It's a challenging assignment because the document is very text-heavy and is limited to an eight-page self cover. Previous verions of this publication have essentially been nothing but pages full of words with a small image thrown in here or there.

After the success of the previous year's "Charting the Course" book, it was important to design a book that was just as readable - if not more so - but that didn't look the same. After the theme for the year, "Focus Forward," was approved it was up to me to determine how to present it visually.

My concept for "Fucus Forward" was a brief glimpse into the very near future - a house being built, a family being started, a change of seasons, etc - all things that carry hope and optimism. I accomplished that by using force blurs (to force the reader to focus on the future) and "future" images superimposed.

This book was a challenge because it contained about 20% more information that the book the year before. So typography rode to the rescue again. I used a very readable typeface set in three columns; however, I didn't want the book to read like a newspaper. So I increased the leading and ran body copy rag right. That helped open up the page considerably.