Many company history books often end up unread on the boardroom shelf. But that’s not to say that the next generation taking the company reins does not care about the heritage they are, well, inheriting – or that they can’t be bothered to look back at the story that predates their arrival on the scene. What it does mean, however, is that there are more effective ways of capturing a business’ unique story in a way that future generations of directors, managers and other staff will respond to with pride. Here’s how intentional design can turn a milestone book from a forgotten dust-catcher into a workplace essential that younger readers in your company will reach for.

By Jo Caruana, CEO & Founder, Finesse Group | StoryBrand Certified Guide

The research tells a more hopeful story about heritage and younger generations than most commissioning founders fear. The Human Flourishing Lab’s 2025 survey of just over 2,000 US adults found that 68% of Gen Z report feeling nostalgic about eras before their lifetime, while 78% of Gen Z believe new products should incorporate ideas and design elements from those same eras. Fortune reported in early 2026 that Gen Z is now the primary driver of the growing analogue music and print book economies on both sides of the Atlantic.

The research points to historical elements wider than book design alone – vinyl, period interiors, vintage fashion revivals, the return of film cameras.

New heritage branding strategies are putting founding dates and original packaging back at the centre of how companies present themselves.

The common thread is that younger generations are drawn to design that carries a true connection to the past, rather than a superficial stylised idea of it. In a milestone book, that translates into working with the visual material of your business’s own history. So think: 

• Your founding-era typographyour earliest photography
• The materials of your original packaging
• The way your first workshop or office or shopfront was built and lit

All this beats merely reaching for a generic period look.The appetite for heritage in tangible form is there. Your anniversary book lands when it is made for how this audience thinks, reads and remembers.

68% of Gen Z report feeling nostalgic about eras before their lifetime and 78% believe new products should incorporate ideas and design elements from these eras. The younger generation’s appetite for heritage in tangible form is there.

Letting photography lead the book from the start is one direction that consistently works for this audience. Gen Z and millennials have grown up on platforms (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube) that train them to read images before words. The Phaidon and Assouline model, roughly 70–75% image to 25%–30% text on most spreads, is a useful working ratio for an audience that registers a page visually first. The narrative is primarily visual, and text serves that narrative, not the other way round.

Needless to say, that balance only works if the page design carries it. Opting for one to three images per page is one of the more reliable principles in modern photo book design – more crowds the eye, while single images on full bleeds give the reader room to breathe. The rhythm comes from varying density across spreads. Single-image pages set against denser ones hold the reader’s attention without filling every page with the same layout.

Structure can do as much to bring a history book alive as photography. Plenty of great examples take a different route – organising by eras of leadership, by key objects or commissions, by principles, by people. A few noteworthy ones:

• Assouline’s Dior series gives a volume to each creative director. 
• Patagonia’s Some Stories, by Yvon Chouinard, runs across 13 thematic chapters covering adventure, business and environmentalism. 
• The IMSA 50th Anniversary book was deliberately broken into thematic parts – cars, events, drivers, history – because the designers knew chronology would lose the reader.

Restraint matters, too. Some of the strongest milestone books – or indeed, magazines and publications – I’ve seen leave space on the page and let the photography do the talking. The images don’t try to do too much, which, in my view, lends a book a certain air of confidence. 

Of course, a good designer will help you work out how all of this applies to your business and the people you want to reach. Because the reality is that what that looks like for an engineering firm is vastly different from what it means for a brewery or a family-run law firm. What’s true for all those businesses is that the conversation starts in the same place, which is understanding what makes a book land with the generation about to inherit it.

A milestone book lands when its design holds both the company’s story and the reader who will inherit it.

Many company history books fail in the same way because they’re conceived as documents rather than designed as physical keepsakes. 

The same generation behind the analogue revival – vinyl, film cameras, indie magazines, the return to print – has grown up with screens. This is exactly why a custom-made book, held in the hand, feels even more special to this generation. There’s an undeniable quality to holding a cloth-bound book (the paper, the binding, the cover, the weight) that a digital file just doesn’t offer. And before a reader has taken in a single word, the book is already telling them something about how much care has gone into it.

I love pointing to Hermès as a family-owned house that has been making books as beautifully designed objects for decades. Their gorgeous books are made by people who really care about how a book feels to hold and who treat heritage as a living tradition that the house is still building. Le Monde d’Hermès has been published twice a year since the 1960s, guest art-directed across different eras. La Maison, published annually since 2023, is never sold at retail – it’s reserved for VIP clients only.

Of course, Hermès is just one reference among many. You might choose for your book to be more traditional in its binding, more led by text than by image, or told chronologically because that’s how your business naturally thinks. And that – your business’ story and way of thinking – matter more than some arbitrary standard set by another company. What we’ve seen at Finesse, across the milestone books that really connect with younger readers, is that each book is crafted as a designed object in its own right. These are books where the heritage of the business comes through in the look and feel, not only in the words on the page.

Before a reader has taken in a single word, the book is already telling them how much care went into making it.

The worry at the start of most anniversary book conversations – that the book will sit unopened on a shelf for decades – is a fair one. Plenty of company history books sadly do meet that fate.

Those that don’t share some key similarities. They were intentionally created as designed objects, with content tailored for the next generation as much as they tell the story of the founding one. The care that went into their creation is visible on the page – clear evidence that someone, somewhere in the brief, asked who the book was for before they asked what it must contain.

For a family business approaching a milestone, that is exactly the question I have seen to be worth starting with. Get it right, and the book becomes something the next generation reaches for – from day one in the boardroom and in moments when they want to understand why the company exists, to decades from now, when their own successors ask what came before.

Thinking of commissioning an anniversary book the next generation will open? Finesse Group’s Milestone Books service brings together editorial, design and production craft to make heritage books that are picked up, kept and passed on. Book a free 30-minute consultation with Jo to talk through what this could look like for your business and your anniversary.

Look at the clients you currently have, the work you’re proudest of and the doors that have opened for your business in the last few years. Most founders I talk with recognise that many of their own milestones came from a relationship, not a campaign. This tells us something about how businesses actually grow.

The harder question is the more useful one: 

If relationships are doing the real work, what are you doing – intentionally, week in and week out – to build them? And which parts of your business might benefit most from an in-person approach versus a digital one? 

That distinction matters because the answer probably isn’t the same for every part of what you do.

There’s a related thread I want to explore next month about why so many of the most credible business touchpoints right now are the ones you can physically hold in your hands. But for now, I’d love to hear from you. When you think about your own best business relationships, where did they start? And what would your business look like without them?

Thinking about how to build more of your business through real relationships rather than relentless campaigns? Finesse Group helps founders and leadership teams develop visibility calendars, PR strategies and the kind of presence that puts them in front of the right people, in the right rooms. Book a free 30-minute consultation with Jo to explore what this could look like for you.