Design Concept
Hand-Heart Design Firm handled the information design for United Way of Taiwan’s 2025 Annual Review, the fifth consecutive year of our partnership. The theme was “We Can All Be Shovel Heroes for This World”. The year’s action and results are divided into four chapters, and the infographics and reading hierarchy are organised with superhero comic panels, hand-drawn characters and a yellow-and-blue palette.
Panel by Panel, Making Every Act of Support Visible
For the fifth year running, we worked with United Way of Taiwan to turn a year of impact into stories that are easier to see and understand. Taking this year’s theme of “Shovel Heroes” as our cue, we drew on the visual language of classic superhero comics, so that a year of achievements unfolds panel by panel like a hero’s story.
How is the Annual Review divided into chapters?
The proposal divides the content into four chapters. Chapter 1, “Before the Abyss Forms”, is about the people who quietly fill the gaps every day before problems turn into an abyss. Chapter 2, “How the Social Repair Station Works”, covers 365 days of support and of stepping in where help is needed. Chapter 3, “After Help Arrives”, is about keeping bad situations from getting worse. Chapter 4, “2025: Social Repairs Completed”, closes with an overview of the year’s results and an impact map.
How did the design take shape, step by step?
The sketch proposal of 2 April 2026 (based on file dates) laid out the panels and illustrations for all four chapters as greyscale line drawings, noting that colours would later be used to distinguish the sections. The first-draft proposal of 27 April used yellow, blue and other colours to separate the chapters; at that point, the illustrations for Chapters 3 and 4 were marked as due in the next proposal. By the version of 15 May, all four chapters had their illustrations, and the project was completed in May 2026.
Who can learn from this project?
If either of these applies to your annual review, the approach taken for United Way of Taiwan may help:
- If you need a fresh idea for your annual review every year, you can borrow the panels and hand-drawn characters of superhero comics.
- If you are still defining the design scope of your review, the four-chapter structure, the infographics and the year-end results overview make a useful reference.
A practical order: divide the content into chapters first, then work out the infographics and the reading hierarchy.
The chapter structure and infographics of an annual review are one application of our visual design work.
Completed
Project Manager
Lead Designer
Designer
2026.05
Lien-chieh Su
I-chen Lee
Pin-chen Lee