In 2013, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation entered into an agreement with Cities Alliance to provide a range of advisory services and management to the urban portfolio of their Special Initiatives Programme. The portfolio, which amounts to over $75 million, included 21 high-risk, experimental and learning projects across a range of issues. As part of the portfolio manager role, Cities Alliance commissioned a report to study the lessons learned from the portfolio of grants and make recommendations on how the lessons might be incorporated into future grant making.

The report contains a number of graphs and charts to visualize the data. Photos were selected to match the regions in the report, and they were styled to be black and white in order for the content to remain at the forefront.

Cities Alliance red was used as the main brand colour, and the final deliverables included a print-ready PDF as well as a web optimized PDF.