ED&F Man Commodities

ED&F Man is one of the world’s largest growers and producers of coffee, sugar, and molasses. Its business depends on sustainable agricultural practices, and it takes those responsibilities seriously.

The company had produced sustainability reports before, but these were smaller, less detailed documents. For 2022, they wanted something much more substantial: a landmark publication that would present complex global data clearly for investors, customers, employees, and the public.

I had previously worked with their communications agency, SEC Newgate, on ED&F Man’s annual reports, designing the dense tables of accounting data in a way that was clean and easy to read. Building on that experience, SEC Newgate asked me to design and create the new sustainability report for both print and PDF formats.

With no formal brand guidelines in place, I referenced past documents for basic colour and logo usage and created the remaining brand elements from scratch. The content ranged from tables, graphs, and charts to news reports, photography, and staff portraits, all of which had to be organised into intuitive, easy-to-navigate sections.

A clear hierarchy of colours, layouts, and typography helped structure the material, and careful use of whitespace kept pages uncluttered. In data-heavy sections, care was taken to include only essential information to maintain clarity.

The finished report was very well received by both SEC Newgate and ED&F Man. The design’s look and feel, along with the new brand elements developed for the project, have since been adopted by ED&F Man’s internal teams as the basis for later sustainability reports and other corporate documents.