A QUARTER-CENTURY. IN FIVE WORDS OR LESS.
When Raymond Harbert Jr. invited us to produce HMC’s 25th-anniversary annual report, he handed us a stack of past issues for review. The first thing we suggested changing was the tone and approach they'd been using. Where past reports presented single-word, occasionally ominous, themes to shape each year's narrative (IE: Discipline. Uncertainty. Aligned. Absolute.), we recommended letting the HMC story tell itself. After all, “Startup to $6.4 Billion” is a pretty good story.
Having agreed on the editorial approach, Raymond Jr. offered a design-direction idea we liked very much: Vanity Fair — which presents its often-epic features as elegantly as any magazine published. It’s a look-and-feel we adopted everywhere except the cover — which they wanted to keep as simple as possible.
The story behind the cover headline
A lot of messages contributed to the phrase we developed as a headline and brandline, but the only two messages you need to know are: 1) HMC's people personally invest in every strategy they launch and manage. They put their money where their mouth is. 2) During its first quarter-century, HMC's funds outperformed the S&P 500 index by more than 50%.
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