A sustainability statement someone can find their way through
A compliant report that nobody reads has done half a job. Design is the layer that turns several hundred pages of disclosure into something an investor, a customer or your own workforce can navigate, and it is done properly only by people who know what each of those pages has to say.
Why the structure is now a compliance question
Sustainability information no longer sits in a standalone brochure. Under the Accounting Directive as amended, it has to be clearly identifiable within the management report, through a dedicated section of it. ESRS 1 then organises what goes inside: material impacts, risks and opportunities are presented across four reporting areas — governance; strategy, including financial effects; the management of impacts, risks and opportunities through policies and actions; and metrics and targets. Information disclosed elsewhere may be incorporated by reference rather than repeated.
That leaves a document with a legally shaped skeleton and no natural reading order. Machine readability would normally rescue the reader, but not yet: Omnibus I provides that undertakings are not required to mark up their sustainability reporting until rules on that marking-up are adopted by means of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815. Until they are, the structure a reader follows is the one you design.
Design is not the final coat of paint. It is the decision about what a reader meets first, and it has to be made while the content architecture is still open.
What we design
One visual language, several artefacts: a printed report, an interactive PDF with working navigation, a web summary for people who will never open the PDF, and an investor presentation drawn from the same tables. Consistency between them is what stops a figure mutating on its way to a slide.
Data visualisation is the part that earns its budget: emissions curves, a materiality matrix, target and progress tables, value chain maps. A chart understood at a glance does what a paragraph cannot, and a chart drawn without knowing what the disclosure requires does damage that surfaces in assurance. We also handle translation between English and Turkish, which for a report is an editorial job rather than a linguistic one: the disclosure has to say the same thing in both.
The gap this service closes
The market is split in an unhelpful way. Large consultancies advise on the standard and hand over a Word document, because they do not do design. Creative agencies produce a beautiful report with no view on whether the GRI content index still reconciles, because they do not know the standard. Between the two sits the reconciliation risk: figures that no longer match their source, a content index pointing at the wrong page, and revision cycles arriving when the deadline is already close.
We do both, in one team. That is the whole argument for this service, and why it sits next to our sustainability reporting work rather than in a studio somewhere.
How a design engagement runs
- Content architecture Before layout: what the statement has to contain, what order serves the reader, and what will be incorporated by reference rather than repeated.
- Visual system Grid, typography, colour and chart language, tested against your existing corporate identity and against accessibility rather than against taste.
- Data visualisation Charts built from the final data tables, with the method and the unit stated on the chart, so that a reviewer can trace any figure back.
- Production across formats Print, interactive PDF, web summary and presentation produced together, so that a late change propagates to all of them instead of to three of them.
- Reconciliation and proofing Content index or disclosure list checked line by line against the laid-out pages, figures checked against source, then proofing in both languages.
Training, for two very different audiences
Sustainability produces value when it becomes part of how an organisation works, and that takes shared vocabulary across levels that rarely meet. We run training as modules built for the decisions each audience actually makes.
Boards and senior management
Not technical detail but strategic risk and opportunity literacy: what the obligations are and when they bite, how climate risk reaches the financial statements, and how sustainability performance connects to the cost of capital. The aim is that decision-makers stop reading this as a cost line.
Finance, operations, health and safety and procurement
The applied version, for the people who produce the data: the logic of a greenhouse gas inventory across scope 1, 2 and 3, data collection templates, how indicators are interpreted, calculation methods and what an assurance provider will ask to see. This is the training that prevents the data gap and the last-minute scramble in a first reporting cycle. Formats run from half-day awareness sessions to multi-day workshops, planned against your reporting calendar.
Communication that survives the new claims rules
The largest risk in sustainability communication is the overstated claim, and in the EU it is now a legal risk as well as a reputational one. Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition had to be transposed by 27 March 2026 and applies from 27 September 2026. It bans generic environmental claims where the trader cannot demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim, bans sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme or established by public authorities, and bans claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive environmental impact on the basis of offsetting emissions.
Our approach was already the conservative one: say what you achieved with the data behind it, say what you have not achieved yet, and drop the adjectives. A message architecture that holds across investor presentations, web content, social media and employee communication is worth more than a campaign that has to be withdrawn.
The same discipline decides an employer brand, which is why that work runs together with our gender equality programmes: the gap between what is said and what is practised is the fastest way to lose trust internally.
What we deliver
- Sustainability report design, from content architecture to production.
- Data visualisation and graphics production.
- Print, interactive PDF, web summary and presentation formats in one visual language.
- Translation and localisation between English and Turkish.
- Corporate sustainability training for boards, technical teams and wider staff.
- Sustainability communication strategy and message architecture.
- Content and video production, social media and public relations.
- Employer brand strategy and internal communication.
Why Etki Fabrikası
Our consultants have more than twenty years of advisory experience across banking, mining, energy, food and retail, and in five years we have worked with over forty corporate brands on more than ninety projects. Since 2021 we have prepared the first sustainability report for fifteen companies, which is where the design argument was learned: a first report is the one most likely to be read by people who have never read one.
The team that lays out your report is the team that knows which sentence in it is a disclosure requirement. That is the reason to buy this service from a sustainability consultancy rather than from a studio.
Frequently asked questions
Why not give the report design to our brand agency?
Because the reconciliation is the hard part, not the layout. A sustainability statement has to line up with a GRI content index or a disclosure list, its figures have to match the tables they came from, and a late content change has to propagate to every chart that used it. An agency without standard knowledge cannot see when a design decision has broken that chain, so the errors surface in review and the revision cycles eat the schedule.
Do we still need to tag the sustainability statement digitally?
Not yet. Omnibus I provides that undertakings are not required to mark up their sustainability reporting until rules on that marking-up are adopted by means of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/815. Until they are, the structure a reader follows is the one you design.
Who should the sustainability training be for?
Two groups, with different material. Boards and senior management need strategic risk and opportunity literacy: what the obligations are, how climate risk reaches the financial statements and how this connects to the cost of capital. Finance, operations, health and safety and procurement teams need the applied version: the logic of a greenhouse gas inventory across scope 1, 2 and 3, data templates, how indicators are interpreted, calculation methods and what an assurance provider will ask for.
What makes a sustainability claim risky in the EU right now?
Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition applies from 27 September 2026. It bans generic environmental claims where the trader cannot demonstrate recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim, bans sustainability labels not based on a certification scheme or established by public authorities, and bans claims that a product has a neutral, reduced or positive environmental impact on the basis of offsetting emissions. It ends the adjective-led claim.