The turn of the millennium was a big year for IBM. It saw the announced retirement of Lou Gerstner—the brash, legendary CEO who engineered one of the most historic corporate turnarounds in modern memory. This annual was his final note to the shareholders and fellow IBMers who had been with him through this historic period.
Using the visual style of McSweeny’s quarterly, we constructed the annul as a literary epic; telling the story of a once bloated and rusty behemoth now reborn.
We pulled together illustration…
…historical photography…
…and enlisted the help of Christian Witkin to shoot real IBM employees…
…framing their day-to-day roles as mini-epics within a larger story or rebirth and transformation.