Government reports tend to make for less-than-scintillating reading. That’s the nature of the beast. Data can be dry.
But for the better part of the 20th century, the covers of these reports were works of art.
“Transporting Watermelons in Bulk and Bins by Truck,” a 1982 report for the Department of Agriculture, features an illustration of a semi-truck. But instead of hauling a trailer, the cargo is one gigantic watermelon, with an adorable tail on the end.
A 1964 annual report for the Missouri State Highway Commission titled “A Report of Highway Death in Missouri” appears to be inspired by the minimalist, geometric movie posters created by Saul Bass in the ’50s and ’60s. Against a black background, the red lettering of the title is all but crushing a prone human form. The title may be clinical and detached; the image on its cover is anything but.
Rachel Cole is the curator at the Northwestern University Transportation Library and she has been scanning these report covers and then posting them in an ever-expanding Bluesky thread as a way to interest the general public in the library’s catalog.
At one time, it wasn’t uncommon for universities to have a dedicated library focused on all things transportation. That’s no longer the case.
There’s one at the University of California, Berkeley, but “they don’t have a physical collection like they did in the past,” Cole says. “The University of Michigan still maintains its transportation collection, but doesn’t have a dedicated library or librarian overseeing it. We’re really the only one of our kind, with over 500,000 volumes related to all modes of transportation: Car, boat, train, aviation, bicycle, pedestrian. We say if it moves people or goods, we collect in that area.”
Founded in 1958, the transportation library is located within Northwestern’s main library on the fifth floor and it is open to the public. “We’re tied to the transportation center here on campus,” says Cole, “so things like engineering, but also how that impacts the environment and the economy, as well as social impacts.”
Her work often requires going into the stacks for research materials, and she inevitably comes across these old reports. “They’re just such fun images and I wanted to share them with someone.”
She maintains an Instagram account for the library that’s focused on transportation ephemera — “airline menus, timetables, photograph albums, that sort of thing” — but the report covers have a “different aesthetic and different perspective about transportation, so that’s why I thought I’d share them on BlueSky instead. They’re really interesting for the visual aspect. A lot of thought and care was put into these covers on topics that might be considered mundane. But I’m also interested in what they tell you about transportation history throughout the 20th century.”
A 1976 report for the Department of Transportation is titled “Problems of the Carless” and it features an illustration of a man with a cane and a bag of groceries, alone at a desolate bus stop.
A 1974 report for the Department of Transportation titled “Bikeways — State of the Art” has an illustration drawn in the style of MAD Magazine’s Mort Zucker of a besuited man standing next to a highway, chipping a bicycle from a mound of concrete. He’s attacking the job with gusto!
And a report from 1977 titled “Low-Fare, Fare-Free Transit: some recent applications by U.S. transit systems” features a triptych on its cover. The first panel shows a man waiting for public transit and it’s labeled “fare 50 cents.” In the second, it’s a man and two women waiting, “fare 25 cents.” The third shows an entire crowd that’s labeled “fare free.” The drawings have a sense of whimsy, yes, but are also very clearly telling a story.
“What’s so striking about these reports is that they are half a century old, and yet we’re still talking about the same issues and still haven’t figured this stuff out satisfactorily,” Cole says.
It’s fascinating to consider that, at one time, government agencies dedicated money and energy to the messaging conveyed by this cover art.
Guy Villa is a graphic designer who is co-owner of the studio Sharon and Guy with his wife and fellow artist Sharon Oiga. He is also a professor at Columbia College Chicago who teaches graphic design.
A report for the Department of Agriculture titled "Transporting Watermelons in Bulk and Bins by Truck." (Northwestern University Transportation Library)
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A report for the Department of Agriculture titled "Transporting Watermelons in Bulk and Bins by Truck." (Northwestern University Transportation Library)
Expand“The perfect example is the report on Missouri highway deaths,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Saul Bass and that image is mimicking the poster for 1959’s ‘Anatomy of a Murder.’ And it’s like, wow, someone was actually brave enough to put a dead body at the bottom of an annual report. Even the typography is very post-modern. I think they wanted to get enough readers engaged to show: This is a serious thing that is happening. And that cover is going to catch your eye in a way that just putting basic typography on a white background isn’t.”
Cole also finds that one interesting “because many times an agency may want to highlight its accomplishments for the year, or a new road-building project, but here they’re highlighting the dangers of traffic and traffic deaths. That they’re highlighting the ways that they haven’t succeeded is really interesting.”
Despite an emphasis on car-centric infrastructure since World War II, there was pushback to that. “It’s rare that you come across it, but it was there.” And these covers are a fascinating reminder of that. “Whenever I can highlight issues of road safety for pedestrians and cyclists, I do,” says Cole.
Not much is known about the individual artists behind these covers. Some might have worked in-house. “I know that decades ago, many of these departments of transportation or ports had their own in-house design teams,” Cole says. But it was more common that outside firms would be commissioned on a project-by-project basis.
“There was a trend of being really creative with annual reports in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, and then that died down,” says Villa. “And then in the mid-’80s to late-’90s, there was a resurgence of being really creative, to the point where some design firms, all they did were annual reports. That was their bread-and-butter.”
He mentions the 1999 book “I Am Almost Always Hungry” from the design firm Cahan & Associates. “Half of the book is about their annual reports and fielding questions about ‘How did you get away with that?’ And the owner says they didn’t get away with it — they had to present an argument to the client and say, for example, this data about road deaths is detrimental to people’s lives and this is what’s going to convey that information. It’s about trying to humanize dense information.
“Whereas if you look at reports now, usually it’s a white background with the logo or the seal. They almost look like a non-designer did it.”
That trend is confirmed by Cole, who says the shift began around 2012, when instead of being printed as hard copies, reports started being disseminated as PDFs. A confluence of factors is at work: Budgets are tighter, and fast and cheap is the expectation. Enter: Clip art, stock photos and generative AI. Suddenly, you don’t need to hire a graphic designer for your report; you can just ask Fred down the hall to slap together something and call it a day.
“There’s maybe this idea that you don’t need great graphic design because people are going to read it on their computer or their phone and scroll right by the title page anyway,” Villa says.
A 1972 report for the Department of Transportation titled “Transportation Noise and its Control” has a deep aqua background with various modes of transportation (a helicopter, a motorcycle and so on) depicted in an orangey red and surrounded by thin white lines. Someone gave thought to which colors work best. And thought about: Why am I adding these thin white outlines? “When I saw that, it’s like noise is emanating from each vehicle,” says Villa. In other words, there’s an intention there. A reason behind the visual choices. An AI image will never be able to provide that.
Researchers have found that our brains process reading a physical book differently than when using an e-reader, which strips away that physical connection. Perhaps reading a report as a PDF strips away something meaningful, as well.
What if gorgeous and distinctive, well-thought-out graphic art on a cover page of a physical report meant that the data inside became “sticky,” and if you had to refer to it again, you could more easily dig through a stack on your desk to find the right one because it had that memorable cover?
Sometimes these old report titles were creative, as well. One report on parking issues is called “The Big Squeeze.” Another is titled “Parking Pickle.”
But the visuals dominate.
Villa was impressed with a 1979 report for the Department of Energy with the title “The Charge of the Future: An Introduction to Electric and Hybrid Vehicles.”
“How do you visualize an electric car? Because if you look at any electric car today, it looks like a regular car. So what they did was cut up these images of cars and then put them back together, but slightly off. It’s deconstruct-reconstruct, and that kind of ‘electrifies’ the image. I thought that was a really cool idea.”
Another is from 1977 for the Department of Transportation with a title that could easily make the reader’s eyes glaze over: “The National Maximum Speed Limit: A Summary of Three Regional Workshops.” But the cover art looks like it could be a movie poster for a paperwork thriller. There’s a sense of drama that’s conveyed by its stylized image of men hunched around a table with placards identifying them: “governor’s rep,” “state patrol” and so on. A large sign looms in the background: Speed limit 55.
Contrast that to the more generic report covers of today, which tend to follow a forgettable template. The 2025 report for the federal government on transportation statistics features some photos (a steering wheel, a plane, a ferry, etc.) that are framed into triangular shapes for no particular reason, other than to jazz up what are otherwise incredibly dull images.
“You want to make a report memorable, inviting and easy to understand,” says Villa. “And when you look at this, you know there was no graphic designer involved. Someone in-house was probably told: We need you to put this together.”
That may be preferable when time and money are in short supply.
But something gets lost when we strip artists from the process.
The world is more interesting — more engaging but also more wondrous — when thought and care for aesthetics is built into even the most mundane tasks and objects.