Ace & Tate launches its first ever Responsibility Report putting forward its sustainability priorities

Following its recent certification as a B-Corp, Ace & Tate releases an in-depth Responsibility Report detailing its future commitments.

Date
22 September 2021

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Eyewear brand Ace & Tate is not only well-known for its creativity across products, in-store experiences and campaigns, but its conscious effort to take responsible action to reduce its environmental and social impact. A key example of this is its recent Responsibility Report, which continues this ethos while also excitedly marking the brand’s B Corp certification. For Olivia Cosson, a designer at Ace & Tate, its “positive creative outlook”, as well as its commitment to environmental and social responsibility, was one of the key traits that drew her to the company. In turn, this combination of personal drive and commitment to creating more sustainably is a driving factor in the design approach for the annual report.

Ace & Tate’s Responsibility Report is a detailed account of the brand’s progress across four core chapters: planet, product and packaging, people and progress. Rather than shout about its B-Corp certification, the report details how this is just the next step in a continued journey of advocating for responsible action, showcasing a “commitment to the planet and society, joining a league of companies that use business as a force for good.”

However, distilling this work in both past, present and future contexts is no easy task. Juggling an emphatic mission with facts, as well as demonstrating a future commitment to the cause, meant creating a report that would balance heavy information with being easy to digest. As Olivia explains, “the challenge lay in making it something people would find inviting to read while providing all the data, details and facts.” As it was also Ace & Tate’s very first report, there were several questions the team needed to ask themselves, such as: “How do we stay true to the information without losing our tone of voice and our audience by overwhelming them with details and numbers?” through to “How do we make the stakes of this journey understandable and graspable?” but also, “How do we make it into an actual publication?”

To tackle this, Olivia’s route was to create a report that centred on a human approach. While the topic of sustainability is usually depicted by leaning on “natural” visuals, “it is more than anything a human-made problem,” points out the designer. “It’s also a matter of being human in its essence: being kind, helping and caring for each other, championing each other and providing the best environment for each other.”

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

In order to centre this value in the report, Olivia and the team utilised a number of design techniques – largely influenced by the designer’s own background in traditional book design. Cherry-picking tricks from both digital and traditional editorial design, the wireframing stage of designing the report was particularly important as “an intensive process to make sure the content was divided and organised in a very clear, yet fluid way.” With the belief that “sustainability is never achieved” and “cannot truly exist in our current models and with our behaviours, but you can take a step towards it,” gradients are used across the report’s varying green, blue and red colour palette to visualise an idea of gradual progress. “We wanted to showcase that we’re taking steps in the right direction,” adds Olivia, “but the journey is a long one.” Across the report are also embedded characters amongst factual statements and missions. Created by illustrator Sara Andreasson, these characters are “a colourful diverse, active crowd” – gym-inspired individuals who “work hard to get to a better place.”

This personal perspective on sustainability is elevated throughout Sara’s illustrations dotted throughout the report. A creative who had previously collaborated with the brand on its Stockholm store, Ace & Tate felt Sara’s style was “a perfect match to reflect our journey to becoming a responsible company,” says the designer. “Sara’s conscious effort to create inclusive and diverse characters paired with a very human-centred style, organic lines, and poppy colours, all in all, was a compelling fit for our tone of voice.”

Now available to the public along with the announcement of Ace & Tate’s B-Corp status, Ace & Tate hope that most of all the report offers “a grasp of all the takes and work that go into becoming a more responsible company!” Comprehensive in its content, “for the ones who like to dig deep, they’ll find all the information they need,” she continues. While the readers who skim through will still get a sense of the “efforts the company makes to be transparent and assess its flaws to become a better version of itself.”

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report, illustrations by Sara Andreasson (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

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Ace & Tate: Responsibility Report, illustrations by Sara Andreasson (Copyright © Ace & Tate, 2021)

Sponsored by:

Ace and Tate

Ace & Tate thoughtfully designed eyewear from €100, including prescription.

Ace & Tate design all products — from frames to eye care — in Amsterdam, working with some of the best suppliers in the world. With an overview over the entire supply chain, the eyewear brand is able to offer the best service and products in-house, all at straightforward prices.

While Ace & Tate isn’t a sustainable company yet, they are committed to finding the smartest, most mindful solutions to create a more planet-friendly product. Innovations in the value chain, retail and within the team all add up to an innovative environmental and social journey. The next goal? To reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

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