Tellabs 2000 Online Annual Report

Storytelling photographs and bold headlines provide a feeling of stability for this fast-growing communications company. Descriptive menus help guide the user while numbered pages provide a sense of direction. Also featured is an interactive Flash illustration demonstrating relationships between Tellabs products.

Here's what internationally acclaimed annual report critic Sid Cato had to say about the Tellabs 2000 Online Annual Report:

"Finally! Finally, somebody who knows what he's doing—taking the print edition of the company's annual report and translating it into an electronic version. Believe it or not, that simple act—well, isn't so simple. It requires brainpower. Smarts. Contrasting with others (Disney's letter, for one, requiring multiple clicks of the 'Page Down' key), its letter occupies one online page. Excerpts (CEO's letter and financial highlights) from its report are translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Finnish, Danish, French, Chinese and German (though no Japanese). Its letter, not simply a mass of unbroken (thus, unreadable) type, was supplemented with a feature from the print report: an eight-item Q&A involving the two top execs. Not least, its grid—one of two on the year to date (in the print version, that is) to warrant all five points—cited both customers and competitors. (Hear the screams of agony, of pain, emanating from the company, revealing such top-secret information, known only to every vendor in the industry? No.) One of its simple features is a bar across the top, listing availability of items ranging from its 'At a Glance' to its management and 'investor information.' My notes indicate: First, 'This is an idiot’s delight.' (Don't make me figure out how to find your annual report; Tellabs' is right there on the splash page, the cover reproduced to make it easy to locate.) Second, 'If anything, this is better than the print report.' That's terribly unique. Hail those who gave birth to this gem. Grade: A+"

-- From Sid's World of the Online Annual Report, April 2001.

Note: The Tellabs 2000 annual report is no longer available on the Web.