The bank brought us in to prepare its annual report because it had made a substantial loss and needed advice on explaining this to its shareholders. On top of this, the chairman was under fire for also being the chief executive.

We recommended that the chairman should be up-front about the loss and designed the report to highlight what he was going to do about it. To prove it was not a one-man show, we ran photos of him with his deputy. We gave the directors’ reports similar treatment. Barclays hadn’t employed an external design consultancy before – but they were so pleased, we were invited back again.