A 68-page research report on the global energy transition, published for a financial audience, that became the design standard for the series that followed.
Stifel IRIS · Sole designer, with Stifel’s research team in Paris
Editorial and long-format design · Data storytelling · Design systems · Distributed collaboration
THE CHALLENGE
Stifel’s research team in Paris supplied the copy and the data. I owned everything visual: layout, type hierarchy, color selection and image direction, working inside Stifel’s typeface and brand palette.
Fifty-seven figures across sixty-eight pages, drawing on DNV, the IEA, the World Bank, Lawrence Livermore, BCG and Stifel’s own analysis. Research reports get skimmed, cited and forwarded far more often than they get read straight through, so the design had to survive all three. And as Part 1 of a series, it needed rules that would outlast it.
WHAT I DID
Built a figure system every chart had to obey.
Numbered label, small-caps title, a rule, and the source in italics beneath. Readers stop parsing the furniture after the second figure and look only at the data, and the body copy can point to any figure by number.
Made the report citable, not merely persuasive.
Every figure carries its source. On a document drawing from six institutions plus internal analysis, that discipline is what lets an analyst quote it with confidence.
Narrowed a wide brand palette to two colors.
Fifty-seven figures each want their own hue. I cut the palette to navy and gold and held the entire document to that pair, so the report reads as one thing rather than fifty-seven.
Set the type for reading length, not for the cover.
One corporate typeface had to carry sixty-eight pages of technical prose, stay legible at chart-label size, and hold a section opener at scale. I set weight, size, leading and measure for the hardest of the three.
Held one grid and broke it only to signal.
Two columns throughout, photographic spreads placed on a rhythm to break the density, and section openers breaking the grid deliberately so they register as openers.
RESULTS
A 68-page report published externally under the Stifel IRIS banner
57 figures from six external institutions made comparable, navigable and citable
The house style for the series: later reports were built on this system rather than designed from scratch
Delivered fully remote, with the research team on another continent
The measure of Part 1 was never how it looked on its own. It was whether the next report could be built without starting over. It could.
The same problem in a different format: complex material, made navigable.
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