Euram Bank is a small Viennese retail bank founded in 1999. Its focus is on private banking and portfolio management. Over the years the bank has been the focus of accounting fraud and breach of trust investigations, making the text of their annual reports dubious at best. The design of their 2018 report however should not suffer as a result, since it is a bold work of visual thinking.
Euram Bank’s 2018 report is a rumination on artificial intelligence as it may one day apply to banking, and humanity’s place in the field of finance. The report begins with eleven large and striking photographs by notable German studio photographer, Marcel A. Mayer. The images are accompanied by short blocks of text explaining the theme. The images are tantalisingly strange and unexpectedly vibrant for a bank’s annual report and work to quickly draw the reader in.
The remainder of the report makes good use of the Swiss Grid, leaving plenty of negative space for the design to breathe. A ragged-right text alignment softens the rigidity of the grid, while the design makes use of a single condensed typeface in multiple weights. Colour is used sparingly, in sensible contrast to the opening pages and the report is relatively easy to navigate. In the end, it is the outstanding use of photography that makes this report shine.
