The contribution of Spanish Companies on the Sustainable Development Goals by Manuela Moulian

“The contribution of Spanish companies on the Sustainable Development Goals" is the sixth of a series of reports that the SDGs Observatory of Esade and La Caixa Foundation have been working on for the last six years. I have had the honor of being invited to do the editorial and information design for all of them.

Each book of the collection has the 17 colors of the SDGs on the spine. These colors identify the reports series and define the color palette for the more than 40 diagrams and data visualizations that they have.

This year the research focused, as defined in the subtitle, on “Promoting sustainability in a polycrisis environment”. Polycrisis can be explained as “the simultaneous occurrence of several catastrophic events”. For that reason I chose the visual concept of a multi-line decreasing graph for the cover. On the other hand, to play with a more optimistic approach, when you open the book, you can see that the graph also increases on the inner cover.

The book explains a framework of the SDGs and their goals, and the main results obtained from the analysis of how Spanish listed companies introduce them into their agenda. The analysis model divides the data sample by sectors (energy, consumer goods, industrial and construction, real estate, consumer services, financial services, and technology) and reviews how the SDGs are applied in each. After multiple tests of the data on Excel and Tableau, and creating categories for the different kinds, I worked on the final charts and diagrams on Illustrator.