We ranked the best annual report design agency in Singapore for charities and government.

Yes, we know. You aren’t a designer too. But you’re here to understand how to choose the agency your boss needs, so you can get cracking.

Me too. I was trained as a social worker, wrote books for social workers, and got into the annual report design agency business by accident. It happened in November 2023, when I was desperate and looking for more tenders to close. I encountered the MINDS Yearbook tender put out.

Whilst it wasn’t strictly an Annual Report, it was the first time I saw how a print publication, covering the year’s highlights, could be put together. And I fell in love with the whole production process – from shooting, to designing, to eventually putting it in the hands of parents, who would remember their kids’ achievements (and how they looked like when they were 8.)

An annual report design process can be one of the hardest things to put together, because you’re not just writing a report. You’re actually writing something that’s closer to a book. That’s why you need cross-functional cooperation to put together the words, copy, and put a nice skin on it, so that everything turns out fine.

That’s also why you need to choose your design partner well, because you might well end up with an inexperienced team, that’s flying by the seat of their pants.

I’m going to review all the agencies I’ve seen, and hopefully help you make a sounder decision. But before that, we need to be sure that you even have the right resources to succeed.

What you should be looking for and asking of yourself

I stared at the email, and then at the company name. This was a listed company. I thought it would have the budget to spend, but I was wrong. It was telling me that the price I’d quoted of $7100 for the Annual Report design of 56 pages, and 104 pages of financials, was the highest of all the bidders.

I was surprised. I’d have thought that listed companies would have money to spend, but I was wrong.

It looked like they were often closer to an entire budget of $5000 for an annual report, and nothing more. How would one fulfill this? Same as how some other agencies did – ship it offshore.

Is your budget enough?

I’m writing here the budget that we’ve seen work, and not work, just so that you yourself have a better indicator of whether or not your boss is allocating you the right budget.

How much other resources (time and manpower) do you have?

Often people look at money, without looking at the other resources like manpower and time, that will need to be spent collating the report. We once worked with a charity to put together a report, and was almost shocked to see how hard it was for her to get the buy-in from everyone else to write something.

So we ended up writing it. Don’t forget that you need time too, to collate your work.

How important is stakeholder relations to your company and Board?

Part of the conversation around how much resources you will get also depends on how your management views the project. For example, at DBS, we can see that they have treated it as a highly important exercise in governance. That’s why they have such an impressive report that highlights their Balanced Scorecard, their results, and all of it bear great importance.

So if they think it’s important, you’ll get more resources. If they don’t, well, you might have to work harder.

How much would you all use it?

I was glad that in The Helping Hand, the CEO saw the Annual Report as something he would bring around to donors, to show the impact it was making, and to eventually get more donations with.

This helps your process much faster.

Do you know what you or your boss wants?

The common joke in design agencies is that processes slow down because

clients don’t know what they want.

So if you don’t know, at least come up with some samples of what reports you enjoy. And set the agency working on that.

0. Media Lede – award winning agency with a strong writer core, weaving stories that funders and the public care about

Of course, Media Lede is the content agency I started, and have been running for the past 5 years, since June 2020.

There are many reasons why I think we’re a good choice, chief amongst them which is:

we really care about the work.

Many agencies are started by designers. Media Lede was started by a social work founder who also wrote and published books. The difference? Many agencies care about how to get the work through. We care about why the work even matters – and how to shape it so that others care about it too.

Why? Because for us, designing an annual report isn’t just skin on words. It’s actually about 

1. Restoring the trust in our public institutions, by communicating what we do, better
2. Sharing wisdom, so we build on the best of what humanity has found out

No joke. When we were doing the 2026 Annual Report Mockups for the Singapore Police Force, we kept asking,

Why would people care?
How do we make them care?

So that began a real work looking at what the Police could do if it was already this successful, and why Singaporeans would care about the Police, if safety was something that we already took for granted.

We then wrote something that people cared about – digital crimes, getting scammed, and positioning the Police as a guardian of the digital realm too.

Of course, that’s not all. Some might think that we’re new, and inexperienced. But because of how hard we work at putting stories together, we were really proud to have won the IDA Design Award in 2025, for the Planting Seeds of Serenity Publication that we did.

Whilst we’re good, there might be other agencies you want to look at too.

1. GSK Creative – creatives with long track record, great at design concepts, although writing may not be their strongest suit

We will go into one of the longest agencies on the block. As a 5-year-old agency, we’re in awe of them. We can’t imagine surviving for 19 years.

For one, they have great concepts like this origami one they did for NTUC Health. We never thought of that ourselves.

That said, there are some flaws you might want to look out for, like their writing.

I’ll confess. We were very fortunate to Oaks Plus, who were the first client who took a bet on us for the Annual Report, in April 2024. We had only done a yearbook in the past, and we knew we had to have a lucky break – somewhere, somehow. So it was Oaks Plus who gave it to us.

As part of onboarding, we asked them why they didn’t go with the previous agency, since the design did look great too. They told us it was because the writing felt a little “ChatGPT-ish”. The moment we read it, we knew why.

But of course, some may opine that the copy is not that important, as it’s something most people glaze over. We beg to differ. If the report is already so text heavy, then we have to make sure that each written point they look at is like that iPhone 17 Camera Control button.

When you half-press, it immediately focuses the perspective, and then locks them into the message you’re trying to tell them.

It’s why there is good in trying to weave a good story together.

2. ArtNexus Design – Established since 2007, choose them for their consistency in putting together large chunks of information

Kudos to ArtNexus, they have kept winning works related to healthcare.

Having worked in health and social care, I know how messy it can be, and how difficult it can be to collate all the things, as Kenneth and his agency has done. I recall the first time I was working in a social service agency, and we were trying to put together a social media campaign. It was complicated finding the information we needed, or even where the previous working files for our brochures were.

We ended up turning to Canva. Therefore, for ArtNexus to pull together the highlights of such a big organisation like NHG, is really commendable.

3. Pirr Creatives – fabulous client list, with clear articulation of why design matters

I learnt a lot from Pirr’s website, studying just how they were communicating the value of their work. You can tell,

this is someone who thinks alot about design.

Rightly so. You don’t just want to create something no one thinks through.

I also pulled out the only Annual Report they attributed as theirs. In 2016’s Annual Report for Children Society, I saw this graphic and immediately thought,

wow, this is quite difficult to do well.

Mixing both real and illustrated images can be one of the hardest, and as a design agency ourselves, we’ve often not recommended our own designers to do that, unless they are very skilled.

Yet in this, they have made it flow, smoothly.

It shows a real ability with design skill.

Led by Kian Ang, you can tell that this is one agency you can trust – just because of how many other brands have trusted them.

4. The Brand Fellows – the only founder with a public profile, with change management certifications, and who can help you brand better

Part of how hard finding peers in the design agency is because of just how well hidden most design agency founders are. Part of it might be due to their introversion, and the other part might be just due to the competitiveness of the industry in trying to win work.

But we found Jingle Chen, who’s gotten her change management certs, taught classes, and is now even starting a cruise liner.

Yes, you didn’t read that wrong.

Cruise liner.

Jingle is the consummate entrepreneur who you suspect just can’t sit long with a boring InDesign screen. That doesn’t mean she isn’t good. She will probably dissect your brand and tell you how to better improve it. She won’t just give you what you want to hear. She will tell you how to improve the brand, so it converts better.

We took a look at the work she’s done, and can only say that she believes what she says.

That branding is not just a cosmetic exercise, but about how people interact with your business.

Always.

It’s why she has managed to do great work for the likes of Yeo’s, and communicate a boring drink company to something relevant.

Choose the one that fits your organisation best

One of the best advice I often tell clients is that it doesn’t matter what price we sell it at, if you think that the annual report is something that no one will read. I once heard a senior person joke,

sometimes in annual reports you only just CTRL-F to find the word you want, before closing the whole report.

If you’re leading on the Annual Report process, this can’t be the way you think of annual reporting.

It can be powerful, if you allow it to be.