Someone on your team has just been told a report needs “typesetting” before it can go out. Maybe it was a designer, maybe a printer, maybe a colleague who’s done this before. Either way, you’ve been handed a word without a definition, and a line item without an obvious reason.
So, what is typesetting?
It’s our opinion that typesetting (done properly) is the difference between a document that looks like it was made by people who know what they’re doing, and one that looks like it wasn’t. In a practical sense it’s the arrangement of text, headings, tables, data and images on a page so complex information is easy to read and easy to navigate. This requires consistent spacing, sensible use of hierarchy and type (your font) that doesn’t fight the content. Done well, you don’t notice it. Done badly, you notice everything and feel a friction when you read.
That’s the dictionary version, and while technically correct what actually matters is when it applies to your organisation, and whether it’s worth paying someone else to do it.
Where typesetting actually shows up
It’s not just annual reports, although that’s where we see it most often. The same problem shows up anywhere an organisation needs to present structured information professionally:
- Board packs and governance documents. By their nature these tend to be dense, data-heavy and often read under time pressure. Poor layout here doesn’t just look unpolished; it slows down the people who need to make decisions from it.
- Tender documents and funding submissions. This can be where typesetting makes the difference between winning and losing if a lack of it affects whether an assessor can find the information they’re scoring you on.
- Charity impact reports. Sometimes the single most-read document a charity produces in a year, yet not always given adequate design attention.
- Marketing collateral and brochures. This is where inconsistent type and cramped layout can undercut a brand message no matter how good the writing is.
The common thread throughout isn’t the document type. It’s that someone worked hard on the content, and then handed it to whoever was free to “put it all together in Word for sign off”, which is how organisations end up with a well-researched report that reads like an afterthought.
Do you need to outsource, or can typesetting be done in-house?
The answer here depends on your organisation, the situation and what tools and skills you already have.
If this is for an external audience then outsourcing almost always makes sense. The cost of getting it wrong (a report that undersells months of work, a tender that loses points on presentation, a pitch deck nobody can navigate) tends to be higher than the cost of getting it typeset properly. And doing it properly requires software most teams don’t have day-to-day reason to own, let alone the experience of using correctly and at speed.
If you’re producing a particular type of document regularly – monthly board papers, for instance – then it’s worth considering commissioning proper templates so that future editions are mostly a case of dropping content in rather than starting from scratch. That’s a different problem to solve than typesetting for unique projects, and a good typesetting partner will acknowledge this and work with you accordingly to create something which can be re-used in this way.
What we’d caution against is the middle ground: someone reasonably capable in using Word or a design software, doing it as a side task alongside their actual job, with no dedicated time and no one checking the output against a standard. This is usually where you find the “edit tax” creeps in. A document can look ok superficially but, if it’s not based upon solid technical foundations from a design perspective then issues will creep in. For example, when someone trys to reuse a document the following year for example, and finds it hasn’t been set up properly to accommodate this, forcing that person to start again as that’s actually easier than fixing what’s been done before.
Accessibility in typesetting
This is where typesetting stops being a design nicety and starts being a compliance question, and it’s often overlooked or not properly considered until the end of a piece of work, if at all.
A properly typeset document, built in InDesign, with correct paragraph styles and master pages isn’t just easier to read than one which isn’t. It will have been structured in a way that can be exported as a tagged PDF: one that a screen reader can navigate, that meets WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines, and that satisfies PDF/UA (the accessibility standard for PDF documents). If your organisation is publishing reports to the public, to funders, or to stakeholders and, increasingly, if you’re a public body or receive public funding, that’s not optional, it’s a requirement you may already be failing without realising it.
A document typeset without accessibility in mind can look identical on screen to one which is but still fail every one of those checks. The difference isn’t necessarily visible until someone using assistive technology tries to read it, which is exactly why it gets missed.
Designed properly, read properly
We’ve typeset reports and publications for organisations including the City of London, the Centre for Social Justice, and io consulting. The common request in every case wasn’t “make it look nice,” it was “make sure this gets read, understood, and taken seriously by the people it’s for.”
If that’s where you are with a report, publication or set of governance documents, that’s what our annual report and report design work covers — get in touch. Because shortcuts show up in typesetting fast, and the cost of damaging your brand is far higher than the cost of doing it properly.
