Winners profiles 2024
With the BMW Online Annual Report 2023, 3st kommunikation brings the future into the present and connects it with the past. Technically sophisticated, the report presents far more than just figures from the previous year. Front and centre are the spirit, drive for innovation and vision of the BMW Group. The intuitive user navigation, varied narrative formats and atmospheric imagery convey the future joy of driving.
Interview with 3st kommunikation GmbH
Red Dot: Is a strong CI helpful when designing an annual report?
3st kommunikation GmbH: In the best-case scenario, the CI is well structured and at the same time flexible, amounting to a certain degree of design freedom. With a leading communicative medium, you have to be able to explore and interpret the boundaries a little – in order to do justice to the product and at the same time develop the design further. In this year’s BMW Group annual report, for example, we dispensed with artificial design elements. The CI/CD does offer these, but they did not contribute to our new visual concept, which plays with light and naturalness. This made it all the more important to adhere to design parameters such as font and colour in order to ensure the brand’s recognisability.
What values were at the centre of “Driving the Next Era”?
The BMW Group’s report is based on the strategic values “electric, digital, circular” – which are leading the company into the next era of individual mobility. In addition, the human factor and the transformative power of the new played an overarching role, along with connecting the present and the future.
Technically, the report is also very sophisticated. Which element took a particularly long time to work on?
It’s not easy to pick out a single technical highlight. This is because each story contains elements that were especially important to us. We implemented these elements with great care – such as scroll-based video playback, interactive explanatory pieces on vehicle functions or autonomous driving, typographic animations, innovative gallery and timeline formats, 3D elements in the text flow, and the 3D model of the “BMW Vision New Class” vision vehicle.
How challenging was it to present the different business areas of the BMW Group in a clear and concise way?
We made all the BMW Group brands come alive through an overarching strategic consideration: to position the BMW Group even more strongly as a tech company that not only manufactures products, but also creates experiences. On the one hand, we have translated this into a stronger digital experience. On the other, we have placed people at the centre of both the design approach and the storytelling, in order to create closeness and authenticity. As part of the brand promise, the report conveys a holistic and authentic image across all business areas.