Kanro is a Japanese confectionary manufacturer, established in 1912 by Masaichi Miyamoto. Its 2022 annual report, aptly, is a whirlwind of colour and pattern.
The premise of the report is a treasure hunt board game, where the player may design their own counter and play against two company mascots and, amusingly, against characters modelled on the CEO and CFO.
Counters and dice must be assembled from designs provided on a perforated card at the end of the report and the game is played on a foldout approximately four pages wide. The game board also functions as a timeline of the company, with snippets of historical information on most of the game squares. Type treatments for titles use a rounded, modern serif modelled on Kanro’s logotype and these blend well with the aesthetic of the report.
The design sensibilities in the game are carried through consistently in the report and are especially effective in the corporate portraits. The report features very few photographs and while this matters little when it comes to images of people or machinery, it’s a risk when it comes to the company’s sweets. One look at Kanro’s website shows the company invests heavily in the photography of their beautifully designed sweets. To omit photography in favour of illustration is to fully commit to the design ethic of the report – a bold choice, and one that works because of how cleverly colour and shape are deployed in this report.
