Design management

For ten years I project-managed production of the annual report for the Serious Fraud Office, supervising the design and photography as well as writing large sections of it and editing the rest. For much of that time the SFO was the UK’s principle investigator and prosecutor of large-scale economic crime. The smallness of the communications budget, sensitivity of the material and complexity of the media environment in which the SFO seeks to do its important work combined to make this some of the most challenging and rewarding work any of us had ever done. I was privileged to be treated as a trusted member of a close in-house team, producing this flagship communication at the behest of three very different directors and working closely with senior staff both in communications and the front-line case teams. Click on the cover images to see two full pdfs.

My own behind-the-scenes case studies featured in the five later annual reports. These long and detailed pieces were written from one-to-one interviews with SFO lawyers and investigators, as well as QCs and police officers. Examples of these case studies are included in the full version pdf but are also available separately here. These pieces were unique in the criminal justice system; providing a detailed, readable, blow-by-blow description of the crime, the investigation and the prosecution. They grew out of a desire at the SFO to correct the many public mis- understandings (and press misrepresentations) about how serious fraud is investigated and, perhaps in particular, why it takes so long and is often so fraught with difficulty.