Open Secret – 2014-2015 Impact Report

For its 2014-2015 annual report, childhood trauma support charity Open Secret wanted to produce a focused Impact Report to shine the spotlight on the increasing demand for the charity's services and to demonstrate the difference their support was making to their clients.​​​​​​​

Open Secret Impact Report – Solution 01

Many survivors build a wall to help deal with the impact of trauma and they remain behind that wall with new bricks added to deal with additional difficulties that life can bring. Coming to Open Secret takes a great deal of courage but counselling and support safely empowers survivors to take down the wall and move forwards.

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Open Secret (now Wellbeing Scotland) is a charity that provides support to survivors of childhood abuse and trauma in Scotland. Based in Forth Valley, the charity has been supporting survivors with their counselling services since 1994, and in recent years they have seen a significant rise in demand for their services.

Every year Open Secret produces an annual report document to accompany their AGM and to summarise the charity's work over the past year. This traditionally took the form of a full-scale report on all the charity's activities including articles on every service, fundraising, accounts and more.

For the 2014-2015 report, the charity wanted something different – in order to support the rising demand for their services, there was a need to have a leaner, punchier report that put the spotlight on the scale of demand so that potential partners could better understand the urgent need for further funding.

  • Client: Open Secret (now Wellbeing Scotland)
  • Role: Creative direction, design and production
  • Year: 2015
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The theme of “breaking down the wall” was chosen to highlight how the issues of childhood trauma and abuse were often seen as taboo, and that the reluctance to speak openly about these issues needed to be urgently addressed as more and more survivors were coming forward seeking support.

Many survivors build a wall to help deal with the impact of trauma and they remain behind that wall with new bricks added to deal with additional difficulties that life can bring. Coming to Open Secret takes a great deal of courage but counselling and support safely empowers survivors to take down the wall and move forwards.

This theme inspired a strong visual direction based around stone and brick textures, blended with the charity’s purple and green brand colours to create an eye-catching, impactful visual identity.

The report was designed as an A5-size booklet instead of a more traditional A4-size, as a smaller document meant the reports could more easily be carried around and handed out at events and meetings. To better support the smaller size, the report's content was pared down from a generic annual report to focus in on the hard data, highlighting key statistics across the regions and services of the charity with attention-grabbing data visualisations. This resulted in a leaner 18-page booklet instead of the typical 30+ page count of the charity's previous annual reports.