catalog

5 Catalog Design Essentials for Your Business

Lauren5 Comments

If you have a small business with a large product or service offering, odds are you have a catalog, and if you don’t, then you’ve probably wanted to create one, but didn’t know where to start. The process can be daunting–with so many elements to pull together and all sorts of design options to consider. So to help you get started, we’ve made a list of 5 tips to keep your efforts and design on track.

1. Know Your Audience

When choosing a design for your catalog, keep in mind your audience and appeal to their style, interests and demographics. Creating a sense of lifestyle will help you connect with customers and position your product as an object of their desire.

2. Reflect Your Brand

Keep your catalog style consistent with your brand style. You want to be sure they can make a connection between your website, logo, and service/products and your catalogs. Whatever you do, design with your brand in mind and be sure the voice and design of the catalog matches the voice and design of your brand. Once you have established a successful look-and-feel for your catalog, resist the temptation to change it. Repetition builds brand recognition, favorable reception and sales.

3. Use Quality Photography

All images should be of the highest quality possible. Make sure your pictures are clear and vivid, not pixilated. Poor quality images will send the message that the products are low quality. If you can’t afford to hire a professional photographer, read up on blogs and forums for great tricks for taking your own product photos. Also try to mix up the type of shot. Catalogs benefit from pacing and surprise – simple silhouetted images, closeups of details, wide angles, full-bleed photographs and lifestyle shots sustain viewer interest and keep them turning to the next page.

4. Space and Layout

The most important thing about a catalog is highlighting your product, so be sure you have ample white space for each item. Cramming text and images into a page, or using the exact same layout throughout the document will make it look stale and won’t encourage your customers to really pause and look over the whole spread. A consistent layout throughout the catalog enhances readability but can become boring, so be sure to break up the monotony of a predictable layout by including a unique page or two to highlight a favorite product or create an editorial opportunity for your customer to connect with the product.

5. Use fonts and color wisely

Be sure to use fonts that fit your brand’s style. If you have a children’s apparel brand, your typeface selections will be very different than if you have a luxury spa brand. Do not go overboard with typefaces, it’s probably best to limit your selection to just three. You can read more about this in our recent typography blog post.

Start Planning and Then Start Publishing

There aren’t any hard and fast rules for creating your catalog, just remember to keep it simple so that your product attracts more attention than your design. After all, the objective is to sell more, right?

A good starting point is to jott down words that come to mind when describing your brand: Is it whimsical? Sophisticated? Luxurious? Fun? These words will make the perfect litmus test as you assemble your catalog. Then every step along the way you can ask yourself, is this publication reflecting this image?

Now that you are ready to get started, take a look at some of the great examples of catalogs on MagCloud. We hope they will help inspire you. Already published a catalog with MagCloud? Share it below in the comments!





Trends and Resources For Great Looking Business Collateral

Patty5 Comments

How you tell your business story can be the difference between turning a lead into a new customer or just a lost opportunity.

Eye catching and compelling business collateral plays an important role in buying decisions.  According to Eccolo Media’s “2010 B2B Technology Collateral Survey Report,” 83% of B2B technology purchasers say they had used brochures within the previous six months to evaluate a prospective purchase, 76% referred to white papers, followed by 67% who used case studies.

And great collateral isn’t just for big business, heavy investment in marketing collateral is also a key 2011 trend for Small Business as well.

So how do you create business collateral that stands out and gets your audience engaged?

1. Tell A Story.  Stories intrigue, keep our interest and help us convey information in an engaging way.  Conveying your brand promise or promoting your new product or service as a narrative helps your audience understand the possibility and gives them a call to action to learn more.  Chris Brogan, president of Human Business Works, offers some great insight into storytelling for business.

2. Bring Your Story To Life.  A story is more than words. You can use pictures, graphs, tables, screen shots, pull quotes from customers etc. − anything that will help visually convey your story, and underscore your viewpoint and competitive advantage.  There is a plethora of free tools to make creating charts and diagrams super easy.  If you want to push your story to a new visual level consider designing and incorporating infographics.  Infographics have been heavily used by B2C and B2B companies in the past few years to help convey complex information and trends.  Check out the Cool Infographics Blog, Weloveinfographics or Datavis for some infographic inspiration.

3. Invest in Design.  You don’t have to break your business piggy bank to design great looking collateral.  There are lots of desktop publishing applications that make brochure, newsletter, program and catalog design easy. Depending on your skill level and budget there is a spectrum of solutions including Microsoft Publisher, QuarkXPress, Apple Pages and Adobe InDesign.  Most of these programs also include templates or you can check out some of MagCloud’s free business templates as well.

4. Ask for Help.  If you are having trouble getting started there are lots of tutorials and resources to put you on the right path.  Microsoft for example offers a suite of tutorials for Publisher, there are forums for Adobe InDesign or head on over to Lynda.com for an array of business and software online courses. Or you can always consider outsourcing your business collateral design to a third-party or agency such as MagCloud partners HP Logoworks or Madison Ave. Collective.

5. Leverage the Web.  Printing and updating your business collateral no longer needs to be complex, time-consuming and expensive.  Thanks to new print on demand services like MagCloud you can upload a PDF of your collateral and have it printed and delivered to your customers without ever leaving your desk.  Need to change a product spec in your brochure or add a new offering to your catalog? No problem, simply upload a new version of your PDF.  The web also offers you the flexibility to take the same PDF you use for print and make it available digitally for reading on a PC or mobile device giving your audience choice.  Once you have your printed or digital publication ready, it’s easy to build an online marketing plan around it.  Make your content readily accessible and easy to share not only via your website but wherever your audience would be most receptive to your message–social networks, forums, blogs etc.  You spent all that time and effort creating it so don’t forget to make it easy to find.

We’ve had the pleasure of seeing some great looking brochures, newsletters, event programs and catalogs published on MagCloud, so we thought we would share a few of our favorites to help inspire you.

—Axses Travel Platform

—Cubic Machinery

—High Points Promotional

—Natural Homes

—Overland Sourcebook

—Toobydoo

Share any great resources or tips you’ve found useful in creating your business collateral in the comments section below.

Give Your Microsoft Publisher Documents the Pro Treatment

Patty3 Comments

Take your Microsoft Publisher documents to a new level with professional quality print and digital distribution.

Create professional looking print and digital publications you can send to clients, colleagues, friends and family with Microsoft Publisher and HP MagCloud.

Order 1 or 1000 copies and we will print and ship them anywhere in the world. You can even make your publication available in digital format for easy viewing on any computer or mobile device.

Simply export your Microsoft Publisher file to PDF, upload it to MagCloud and we’ll take care of printing, distribution and shipping so you can focus on the important stuff…creating great content.

Need a little help creating your publication and getting it ready for professional printing?  We offer step-by-step instructions and templates specifically for Microsoft Publisher users to get you started.

Brochure Template 1
Brochure Template 2
Brochure Template 3
Brochure Template 4
Catalog/Portfolio Template 1
Catalog/Portfolio Template 2
Catalog/Portfolio Template 3

So whether you are creating a business portfolio, company brochure, customer newsletter or product catalog, Microsoft Publisher and HP MagCloud will take your publication from concept to printed publication with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Let us know in the comments section how you are using Microsoft Publisher and MagCloud.

Put MagCloud to Work

PattyLeave a comment

You heard that right. MagCloud can help bring your professional projects to life in print and digital. Our service is a great way to showcase your work to customers, clients, colleagues, partners etc.

Besides magazines, we’ve seen a variety of creative ways that MagCloud customers have used our service for their most demanding business needs.  So whether you are creating a portfolio for client meetings, company brochure, customer newsletter or product catalog, MagCloud will take your publication from PDF to printed magazine and digital download with just a few clicks of the mouse. Planning an event? We’ve got you covered there too. Our event planners and marketing customers have utilized MagCloud to print event souvenir programs, meeting programs, handouts and brochures. You can even publish your workshop manuals with us too.

Whatever the purpose – fun, commemorative, professional or informational – there are no boundaries to the way people are using MagCloud. Let us bring your story to life. MagCloud can help promote your company, products and services in both professional quality print format or digitally for viewing on a PC or mobile device. Whether you are ordering 1 or 1000 copies, MagCloud will ship your business documents to customers and colleagues all over the world. Visit magcloud.com/work and learn about the many ways we can help you make your next gallery exhibit, client meeting, workshop, convention and fundraising event that much better.

What other ways do you use MagCloud? Share your past, current projects and future ideas in the comment section below.

Transform Templates into Professional Publications

Lauren

Who says you have to be a professional designer to create a MagCloud-ready PDF? The MagCloud team has been exploring a variety of word processing and basic design applications that make creating a magazine super simple.

First up was Microsoft Word.  There are a large number of Word templates available that are almost perfectly designed for creating MagCloud magazines.

Whether you are visiting Microsoft’s Website, or the program’s built-in project gallery (available on a Mac), you can find great templates to get you started on creating your brochure, catalog, calendar or just about any other document you can imagine.

I’ll be using the “Brochure” template here as a pilot, but we’ll explore other templates in the future.

The original Microsoft version is available Download original Microsoft Template and my MagCloud-ready version is available Download MagCloud Ready Template.

GETTING STARTED:
To get started, you’ll want to start by finding and opening your template.

In this case I found mine in the “Project Gallery” within the Microsoft Word application. Because the template is designed for a US Letter sized paper (8.5” x 11”) it will be really simple to modify for my own use.

ADJUSTING MARGINS:
Because MagCloud trims its documents to 8.25” x 10.75” we are going to lose 0.125” inches off the top and bottom, and 0.25” off the outside edge. This means in order for our template to be centered on the printed page, we are going to have to adjust the margins. Doing this consistently on every page can be tough, so I use a little trick with the document margin settings and offset them by 0.25.” This way, when the pages are trimmed that 0.25” off the outside edges, the content of the page still looks centered.

To access these settings, you will go to Format>>Document. Using the settings in the screen shot below, you can adjust the margins on the page, and then proceed to adjust the content so it fits within the guides. *Be sure to select “Mirror margins” to see the inside and outside margin options. In this example the document had a 0.5” margin all the way around, so I adjusted the margin by -0.25” on the inside, and +0.25” on the outside.

Adjusting the individual elements on each page can be tricky, so I recommend selecting one item on the page, using “ctrl + A”(PC) or “cmnd + A” (Mac) to select all, then right-clicking (or in some cases ctrl+click) on the mouse and selecting the option “Grouping>Group” to group the objects together. This allows you to move all of the page’s contents at once, so you don’t lose the integrity of your design. Be sure to reverse the process by right-clicking after the move and select “Grouping>Ungroup”, so you can once again modify the elements individually.

MAKING IT YOUR OWN:
Microsoft does some pretty awesome things with their Word templates by establishing color and font palettes, for the more novice user, this means you can keep your fonts and colors consistent through the document, and for those feeling a bit more daring, you can actually customize the palettes to make the document more your own. Each template comes in a set of colors, and fonts, but you can mix and match these to suit your needs.

Below you will see the same template with a different color schema and font collection.

TURNING YOUR WORD DOCUMENT INTO A PDF:

Microsoft Word 2003: To export your Word 2003 document as a MagCloud PDF on a PC, first go into Tools > Options and select the Save tab. Ensure that the box next to Embed TrueType Fonts is checked, but the boxes next to its subcategories (“Embed characters in use only” and “Do not embed common system fonts”) are unchecked.

Then, in the “Save to PDF” dialog box, click the “Options” button and check the “ISO 19005-1 compliant” box, which should also automatically put a check in the “Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded” box.

Click Okay, then go to File > Save As and select PDF from the file type drop-down menu to save your PDF.

Microsoft Word 2007 (PC): To export your Word 2007 document on a PC, click on the Microsoft Office Button in the upper left hand corner and choose “Word Options”. Select the Save tab on the left and make sure that the box for “Embed fonts in this file” is checked, but uncheck the boxes below it (“Embed only the characters used in the document” and “Do not embed common system fonts”).

Then, in the “Save to PDF (or XPS)” dialog box, click the “Options” button and check the “ISO 19005-1 compliant” box, which should automatically put a check in the “Bitmap text when fonts may not be embedded” box.

Microsoft Word (Mac): When exporting your PDF on a Mac, there is no option to embed fonts, so simply select File > Save As and choose PDF from the Format drop-down menu.

*This usually is only an issue if you have empty, hidden or transparent text frames in your document, or when a single character within a block of text uses a different font than the rest of the paragraph. If you have problems, you will either need to eliminate these, or embed the fonts in a different program before uploading to MagCloud. (see the help section)

DESIGNER TIPS AND TRICKS:

1. Establish a style/color palette before you start inputting your content.
2. Save versions of your document as you play with the design, colors and fonts–this way you can open them up and compare your options side by side.
3. Use the styles panel to make changes in Paragraph and Character styles rather than adjusting selections on the page… this way you keep your styling consistent throughout your document.

WANT MORE HELP WITH WORD AND TEMPLATES?

Microsoft Office Word Template Site

Mactopia (for Mac Word Help/How-to’s)

Publishers In Their Own Words: Bowery Lane Bikes

Patty

Bowery Lane Bikes
By Michael Salvatore, CEO

Bowery Lane Bikes, based in Manhattan, produces hand-crafted, American steel, vintage-inspired bicycles at a family owned factory in Queens, New York. While we do have a small showroom, we sell most of our bikes via our website or word of mouth. So I’m always looking for new ways to reach potential consumers. This means tapping into online communities and setting up at bicycling events; in short, it means connecting with people in any way I can.

I use MagCloud to put together a tasteful, professional catalog. I enlisted friends who work in photography and design, and the finished product looks like it was made by a company 10 times our size. I hand these to everyone I can – it sure beats giving out business cards with a web address on them, and yet it still drives people to our website. I also leave them with anyone who displays or sells our bikes for us — whether that’s a bike store, a hotel or a clothing store.

When running a small business, you’ve got to be creative. Our catalog has helped us get traction with clothing stores, boutique hotels, and press.