DMCC's Flagship Trade Report
A decade of visualising the forces shaping global trade
Future of Trade is the flagship report of DMCC, a leading global business and trade hub, exploring the forces shaping global trade. Creative direction across the project has spanned 2016 to 2026, translating research, data, and global themes into a visual language designed to make the report clear, engaging, and recognisable across editions and formats. That visual language has evolved across biennial reports, special editions, digital content, and Arabic and Mandarin versions while remaining part of a consistent system. Across its run, the series has generated more than 3.5 million downloads and views, extending the identity across a growing international audience.
Each edition develops its own visual response to the industries, commodities, and global developments explored through the report’s research and analysis. For the 10th anniversary edition, the direction moved further into AI-generated imagery, using the technology as part of the creative response to a report increasingly focused on AI adoption, geopolitical disruption, and a rapidly changing global economy.