Sparks Studio

We’ve worked with the investment company Ruffer LLP for over ten years.

They aim to deliver positive returns regardless of how the financial markets perform. They take a slow–cooking investment approach. Which means they’ve experienced some strong years when many others didn’t. Alongside other years when the performance seemed weak by comparison.

Their Communications Director wanted to reflect the quality of Ruffer’s people to its clients. He sought a distinct report that would showcase the depth of thinking in the investment team. That ambition led to the Ruffer Review.

The brief set out several goals. The Review should entertain and inform. Its tone more dinner party than party manifesto – an offset to their chairman’s quarterly reports. Its undercurrent message should show that Ruffer is a team of thinkers and dispel the idea that Ruffer is one person’s approach to investing.

During that time the performance of their funds has contrasted with that of their competitors’. But this has rarely been a concern for the 25 year–old firm.

Across its one hundred pages are a range of topics by an array of authors. Collectively they suggest that the key to the future lies in understanding the past – a significant approach to their investment judgement.

We limited the use of graphs and spreadsheets. And instead designed illustrations and montages to convey the firm’s wider personality.

We’ve worked with Ruffer’s existing visual style for many years. The Review allowed us to broaden and strengthen the firm’s use of illustration. It’s a simple and effective way to create a distinctive publication. One that shuns the average and formulaic.

The firm’s main typeface has always been Georgia. Valued by Ruffer for its availability and formality, with its nod to tradition. But it’s an unexceptional and commonplace font with a limited range of weights. This constraint became a stimulating design challenge. Title pages provided space to push the typeface into more creative uses. Illuminating the theme of each article.

The Review is a refreshing and brave departure from the bland mainstay of investment reports. With its high production finishes the publication holds its own amongst other coffee–table magazines. It’s become Ruffer’s flagship publication.