Catalog Printing: Tips for Designing the Cover and Inside Formatting
Catalog printing can be a true art form in the world of printing media, especially since the design can be quite spectacular compared to one-page documents. What should you place particular importance on when designing a print catalog? Because an artistic eye is still in order, you have a chance to think like a painter and consider color, structure, and spacing.
Designing Your Cover
It's obvious that the cover of your catalog should be the immediate focus. That's where you're going to entice someone to pick up your catalog and thumb through more than a few pages. Yet, what should you place on a cover that captures attention?
One way to get started is to get initial feedback from the customers you'll be targeting. You can ask them what they prefer to see on the cover as the trend toward letting the customer customize the ideas in a business. This doesn't mean you shouldn't think for yourself and think logically about what would attract someone to your catalog. Generally, bright colored photographs or graphics are going to stand out in comparison to just using text. Fortunately, offset web printing allows colors to stand out more than when digitally printed.
Most of all, make your cover reflect your brand in the best way possible. Even if it's just graphics, conveying a certain style and feeling will help people identify it with you the minute they see a catalog arrive in the mail.
Creating Variety on the Inside
A novice to catalog printing may focus too much on individual details for the inside content rather than thinking about how it fits together as a whole. When placing photographs on the inside pages, the layout should be varied to provide variety for the eye. Doing everything the same on each page can make a catalog become visually boring to either a casual or devoted reader. That's because most people are going to look at photographs first in a catalog rather than reading.
Formatting details are still important, though. In some cases, it can mean using less rather than more.
The Art of Using White Space
Careful use of white space on the inside pages can bring a classy style in a catalog design. It also allows the reader a chance to focus better on particular content rather than cramming as much content as possible into a page space. However, you have to carefully measure the white space you use so you don't have wide gaps that look like something is missing.
Creating space surrounding your catalog contents is going to denote true intelligence and thoughtfulness your readers will appreciate.
Including a Printed Order Form
The Corporate Design Foundation offers an interesting recommendation to printing a catalog. They suggest you place a printed order form in the catalog because customers appreciate using those to list their purchases. It's a surprising recommendation when ordering online is so prevalent. Regardless, it's also not surprising when you consider printed materials still garner more attention. Sometimes that's based squarely on the surprise factor and the era of high-quality and eye-catching printing.
If you need to create a high-quality catalog for your business in the Las Vegas, Nevada area, let Spectrum Color Printing & Mailing be your first choice. We use offset web printing that not only enhances colors but also saves money for high-volume printing.
Contact us about our pricing and other comprehensive printing capabilities. You'll soon find out just how lucrative using real printing will be for your business while creating a wow factor for consumers.
