Title	A NEW HANDWRITING
Brand	MERKUR INSURANCE
Product/Service	INSURANCE
Category	F01. Typography
Entrant Company	ARTS & CRAFTS VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Advertising Agency	ARTS & CRAFTS VIENNA, AUSTRIA

Name	Company	Position
Gerd Haselsteiner	Arts/Crafts Vienna	Co-founder / Creative Director
Tom Krutt	Arts/Crafts Vienna	Co-founder / Creative Director
Johanna Edelmann	Arts/Crafts Vienna	Graphic Designer
Roland Vorlaufer	Roland Vorlaufer	Illustrator
Gerald Kogler	Merkur	Head of Marketing
Martin Ohde	Merkur	Head of Finance

Brief Explanation

Merkur is Austria's oldest insurance company with a very traditional hierarchy of bosses and their subordinates. A brand lacking accessibility and what we call the "human touch". A new board of directors has installed a new corporate culture of partnership and collaboration on eye-level and a new spirit of openness in 2014.

The Brief

Merkur, Austria's oldest insurance, had developed a heritage of hierarchies and inaccessibility. The new team of directors lead Merkur on the new path of openness and partnership. The annual report 2014 should communicate this very change of the company's core values and its move to become an accessible, open brand, This message was directed both to the own team members and the external partners, stakeholders and clients.

How the final design was conceived

The new board of directors of tradition-steeped insurance company Merkur from Austria has opened a new chapter in the company history by implementing a corporate culture of partnership and collaboration of equal partners in 2014, giving the company a new style, or a “new handwriting” as a German phrase goes. The concept of the annual report takes the notion of a “new handwriting” literally: all 176 pages of the report were written by hand – letter by letter, figure by figure, table by table – by the company staff ranging from doorman to CEO and assistants. Even the photos were drawn by hand. Handwritten by those people who actually had contributed to the success story of the year 2014, the idea of handmade craftsmanship is taken up and continued in the tactile experience of the book, featuring an elaborate technique with an open spine, which was hand-sewn by the company’s local bookbinder. The discreet design adds only one single colour, the house colour green, for subtle highlights, in order to dedicate the stage to the newly incorporated sense of group identity, expressed in each single letter.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market

For the first time since 1798 the Merkur people felt what the word "we“ could mean. Employees and journalists alike ordered hundreds of copies, the annual report was out of stock within a day. 39 national and international newspapers and TV stations covered the story of the "first handwritten annual report". The joint effort has strong impact on the brand’s perception inside and outside of Merkur. The annual report 2014 project is considered as the kick-off of a new era, the quasi official launch of an actual revolution in the 200+ year old history of Merkur,