One magazine - Redhouse Lane Communications

EDF: One magazine

Images reflect the international nature of the readership, stressing diversity and playfully debunking stereotypes.

Images reflect the international nature of the readership, stressing diversity and playfully debunking stereotypes.

The design works hard to ensure that all elements on the page are retained in each linguistic version.

How EDF unifies 160,000 people

Challenge

French energy supplier EDF needed one unifying publicationto keep 160,000 employees around the globe up to speed with the group'sobjectives.

EDF wanted its staff magazine, One, to help employeesto feel part of one brand and see the company as pan-European.

Our response

We wanted to keep One’s content the same across theEnglish, French and German editions, so the design had to accommodate thevarying lengths of the translated copy.

We produced the master copy in English, so the contentwouldn’t appear to come from corporate headquarters, but kept it concise, as weknew the French and German translations would work out longer. We devised alayout with white space and large graphics, which we could scale back as needed.

Over 90 percent of copies of One were to be printed inFrench or German, so we worked with translation agencies to make sure the copywas flawless and the warm tone of voice remained in every language.

Result

The 2010 annual survey of EDF's communication channelsrevealed that the number of people reading One since 2007 had increased byalmost 100 per cent. In fact, it was the only printed publication at EDF to increasein readership over the previous four years.