Mind Your Creative—Tips on Catalog Design

Most catalogers have a formula for designing a catalog that’s essentially set in stone and quickly achieved via template management, an electronic approach that automates many of the artists’ tasks. Timewise, this is a good thing.

The problem is that template management may produce static creative that simply doesn’t have the excitement, vision, enticement, drama and capricious feel that can knock out the competition. How can you measure your creative team’s progress in keeping up with cutting-edge catalog design? And how should you address the following comments from your creatives?

The density thing. “Look how easy it is when everything is exactly the same size and has the same number of images per spread.”

With all the competition for the consumer’s eye, the last thing you need is a catalog in which every page looks the same. One of the main reasons this happens is because whoever decides the density—the merchant, artist or marketing department—doesn’t plan so that some pages are lighter in density, others heavier.

Some pages should be stars, others should be groupies. Mix the density up to have half a chance to get the customer/prospect to read the whole book.

Useless typeface. “This typeface has been good for 70 years and it’ll be good for another 70.”

Type isn’t there just to hold words. It’s supposed to not only reflect the image of the company but also be readable while using space optimally. A mistake we see again and again is type usage that, due to its style, takes up more room than it has to. With a better-thought-out typeface you can get more readable words in less space or keep the same amount of words and use bigger photos.

No photo frames. “I know I could get one more photo in there.”

For some catalogs, high density is necessary for sufficient sales and/or to reinforce the book’s image. Nevertheless, jamming photos together so they’re hardly distinguishable from one another is not a grand idea. If you want customers to actually see the product, even high-density catalogs must put a frame of background color around each photo. Put more life in your catalog by letting photos breathe a bit.

Lack of understandable organization. “Let’s mix up the products so customers have to go through the whole book to find what they’re looking for. That way they’ll see everything and buy more.”

And who has that kind of time these days? We’re working longer, sleeping less and wolfing down meals in minutes, all just to keep up with time commitments. Themed pages where the items complement each other and encourage multiple sales are the right idea. Popping around from category to category may cause enough time-consuming confusion to discourage a complete reading of the catalog.

Make it easy to find items by putting them in rational, loose categories. Navigating your printed catalog should be just as simple and straightforward as it is on your Web site.

Messy, messy, messy. “Sometimes it just feels like a puzzle. I had to squeeze all the pieces together because they really didn’t fit right.” No kidding. And that’s the way it looks, too. There are icons all over the place. Headlines pop in and out here and there. Copy blocks aren’t lined up and neither are photos. Consistency seems to be a bad word; ordering info just kind of appears from time to time and key codes are used indiscriminately.

Clean it up! Put such critical information in consistent locations. People want functional items where they expect them to be and they’re not happy if they’re moved. How would you like it if your car’s door suddenly was positioned on the roof?

Icons, those graphic elements that play up promotions, are good—but too many make the lot of them less effective. Keep the icons down and the design simple and distinct.

Neaten up type and photos so they generally line up along the same line (not like rows of corn, but not floating all over the place, either).

Cut back the number of graphic messages overall so they don’t compete to the point where customers see them as one big blur. Give messages a ranking—for example, “This is the most important message we want to communicate, so we’ll make it the biggest or highest or brightest color.” Yes, showing messages in some sort of instantly understandable pecking order sounds obvious, but experience has shown this technique is anything but clear.

Lousy use of color. “A background tint here, some colored type there, some bright icons that scream ‘sale’—I think I’ll create real excitement and put them all on one page.”

If you took a rainbow, pretended that each color was an egg, then dropped all of them on the floor, that’s what that page would look like. A rainbow is beautiful because it’s colorful and organized. Color in catalogs works when it’s used to send a message about a particular marketing strategy, such as red type used to point up editorial and colored background tints to announce sale items. It shouldn’t be thrown around haphazardly.

KATIE MULDOON (kmuldoon@muldoonandbaer.com) is president of DM/catalog consulting firm Muldoon & Baer Inc., Palm Beach Gardens, FL.