New Year, New Catalogue - How to Maximise its Potential

Posted 1st January 2016

As well as being a good excuse for a party, the New Year is also a great opportunity for companies to turn over a new leaf and put renewed energy into their business operations.

For many companies, this means creating and printing a brand new catalogue. The perfect way to showcase new products, new branding and a new approach, the company catalogue is an essential part of any business’ marketing strategy.

Know your market

Before you begin to design your catalogue, take some time to research your market. Look at your competitors, your customer base and businesses that your aspire to resemble.

Use the information that you glean to inform your catalogue design, using the aesthetics, colours and language of your industry to enhance your printed product and make it stand out from the crowd.

Design for the viewer

Though an important part of your company’s identity, it’s important to remember that, first and foremost, your catalogue is there to inform your customer.

When designing your catalogue make sure that you create a clear, concise layout that’s easy to understand and that contains everything your customers need to make an informed choice about your products.

Plan your layout

Placing important products at the edge of the page will help customers to spot your star pieces as they flick through your catalogue.

The perfect way to attract customers’ attention and highlight your key product range, the right layout will help you to maximise the potential of your new company catalogue.

Be consistent

Using the same font, text size, text colour and language throughout your catalogue will help to give the product a unified and cohesive look and ensure you end up with a professional result.

Layout should also be consistent throughout your catalogue, with product information displayed in the same way on each page.

High resolution images

As a lot of businesses sell their product primarily online, a high proportion of their product images will be sized for the web. Though these photos will look sharp and crisp on the screen, they can appear fuzzy, pixelated and poor quality when printed.

To ensure your professional catalogue design isn’t let down by bad images, use photos that are sized correctly for print and that have a dpi of at least 300. If you don’t have any suitable images, it’s worth hiring a photographer to create a new photo bank as poor photos will detract from look of the finished product.

Use good quality paper and inks

Last but by no means least, it’s incredibly important to use good quality materials when creating your catalogues. Paper that’s cheap, thin and fragile will make your catalogue feel throwaway, while ink that rubs off on your customers’ hands will make your company seem amateurish.

To find out more about creating outstanding catalogues and maximising your company’s catalogue, get in touch with Swallowtail Print today.