A monthly report designed to be co-written

Context

In 2020, with ports closing and reopening from one week to the next, the ocean freight team needed a way to tell customers what was happening, and fast. I built the first version of this report in an earlier role: a quick template with basic instructions, made to go out right away. Customers kept asking for it. Over four years it grew to more regions and more ports, each region keeping its own file in its own words.

The insight

The Red Sea crisis of 2024 made one thing clear: disruptions on the scale of 2020 would keep coming. Customers already valued what the report held, insider knowledge from ports around the world, gathered in one place. A document built for one emergency now had to be a standing reference, with a design to match.

What I did

On my own initiative, and with a mandate to make it last, I reworked the report I had started. I read through everything the regions usually reported and reduced it to one list, the same for every port:

1. Delays
2. Equipment
3. Trucking and hinterland
4. Other developments

Those four points had always carried the report, and the product team and its customers saw them as essential.

Then I designed it around how it gets used: on screen in sales calls, and as a PDF customers click through. A world map opens the document, with a menu by region and cluster that takes each reader straight to the ports that matter to them and leaves room for new clusters as the report grows. Every port sits on its own stretch of coastline, linked to a card with a pictogram for each point and a status dot for a first read at a glance: stable, unsettled or disrupted. On a map, neighboring ports show at once whether a problem is shared or whether cargo can move next door. The dark ground and bright land give it the feel of a war room, and set it apart from other publications.

Holding that design meant taking control of the input. Country representatives fill in an Excel template whose character limits flag any entry too long to show, with drop-down choices wherever a fixed answer fits. Each region’s representative in the ocean freight product organization adds a regional summary where needed, product operations feed the content, and everyone works in one shared file in real time. A quarterly schedule brings in new ports, and one free-text slide carries important news between revisions.

The outcome

• Since 2020in publication
• Allmajor ports covered, region by region
• 4regional organizations coordinating input

The redesigned report relaunched in June 2024, now also as gated content, and found its slot between editions of the ocean freight market update. It still goes out today on the 2024 template, unchanged: as a global email campaign, as a gated download, and on screen in sales calls.

Skills and tools

Design

• Report and template design
• Map-based navigation
• Pictograms and status system

Content

• One reporting standard for every port
• Editorial ownership
• Gated content

Enablement

• Excel input templates
• Contributor process across four regions
• Quarterly revision schedule