Something Familiar transforms mandatory impact reporting into an 18th-century chapbook, complete with devils, woodcuts and purposeful mischief.
There’s a particular kind of eye-roll that happens when someone mentions their company’s B Corp certification. You know the one. It sits somewhere between “greenwashing alert” and “here we go again with the purpose-led marketing.” Bristol-based creative agency Something Familiar knows this reaction intimately. So for their 2024-25 Impact Report, they decided to lean directly into it.
The result is Rituals for Good, a folklore-inspired report that treats B Corp certification like an old wives’ tale. Not to dismiss it, but to reclaim the power of belief in the face of cynicism.
Think 18th-century chapbooks meet corporate transparency, complete with AI-assisted woodcut illustrations, medieval marginalia and a devil figure clutching a scroll on the cover.
Poking fun
“We wanted to poke fun at the B Corp certification naysayers,” says managing director Bryony Cozens. “Certification isn’t a myth, and these aren’t just fanciful old wives’ tales. We’ve been working hard to make improvements since we first certified in 2021, and we wanted to celebrate that in an SF way.”
It’s a provocative choice. At a moment when greenwashing prosecutions are on the rise and purpose-led claims face unprecedented scrutiny, deliberately framing your impact work as folklore could read as flippant. But Something Familiar’s approach does something cleverer: it acknowledges the scepticism while demonstrating the rigour that sits beneath it. The report covers all five B Corp pillars (Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers), but wraps the data in a narrative about metamorphosis and faith.
The visual language draws heavily from early printed ephemera. Creative director Oli Garnett and the team created illustrations using Midjourney, deliberately training the AI to mimic 18th-century chapbook woodcuts. The typography uses blackletter display faces alongside carefully considered body copy. Every spread feels textured, lived-in, deliberately non-corporate.
“We wanted this Impact Report to feel lived in,” Garnett explains. “Every illustration, every texture, every shift in pace was a way of capturing the real stories behind the numbers and the way our team and partners moved forward together.”
Microsite and newspaper
The digital version lives on a custom-built microsite with modern media formats and clean code. But Something Familiar also created a limited-run newspaper, a physical artefact that echoes the tactility of traditional print culture and reinforces the folklore framing. It’s the kind of object you might actually keep, rather than recycle after a cursory glance.
This raises an interesting challenge for creative professionals working on similar projects. Annual reports, impact statements and sustainability credentials are often the most tedious items in any studio’s project roster. They’re mandatory, heavily regulated and typically approached with all the creative enthusiasm of filling out a tax return. Yet they’re also increasingly important; both as proof points for clients and as genuine markers of organisational values.
Something Familiar’s approach suggests there’s a creative opportunity in that tension. Rather than treating scepticism as an obstacle, they’ve made it the entry point. The folklore framing says, “Yes, we know how this sounds. Yes, we know you’ve heard it all before. Here’s why it matters anyway.”
The key is that the playfulness sits alongside actual substance. This isn’t theme-park corporate social responsibility; it’s a detailed account of measurable progress, wrapped in an engaging narrative framework.
The B Corp certification process is, after all, notoriously rigorous, requiring companies to meet high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency. Something Familiar’s recertification score improved from its 2021 baseline, a development the report acknowledges while also highlighting areas for continued work.
Key takeaway
For creative professionals facing their own corporate reporting challenges, there are lessons here beyond the specific aesthetic choices. The report works because it’s built on a clear conceptual foundation: in folklore, transformation requires faith. Applied to business practice, that becomes a framework for discussing how belief in better practices must evolve alongside actual structural change. It’s conceptually coherent in a way that many purpose-led projects aren’t.
It also demonstrates how restrictions can fuel creativity. B Corp reporting has specific requirements that can’t be avoided or glossed over. Something Familiar treats those constraints as the scaffolding around which to build something memorable, rather than obstacles to work around.
Perhaps most importantly, it shows what happens when you trust your audience. The folklore framing assumes readers are smart enough to appreciate both the playfulness and the serious intent beneath it. It doesn’t talk down, doesn’t over-explain, doesn’t apologise for taking corporate transparency seriously.
In an industry increasingly sceptical of purpose-led work, that kind of confidence feels quietly radical. Whether it converts the cynics remains to be seen. But at the very least, it’s created something people might actually want to read. And in the world of corporate impact reporting, that alone feels like magic.
