Planning the Project

The catalogue you will create with this project can be delivered in a variety of ways. It serves as an internal document (for anyone who must interface with a customer or distributor of your products and services) and can potentially land in front of a customer. Anyone who has had a shopping experience in which what they wanted wasn't in stock and had to be ordered has inevitably witnessed a clerk pulling out a catalogue from which to order. Everyday catalogues arrive in the mailbox for everything from clothes to seeds to hobbies...you name it, there's a catalogue for it.

What if your company doesn't produce a product, but a service? So does mine, and we have a catalogue for every type of service we perform with a brief description that sets our customers' expectations. Our catalogue is a training catalogue with all the various types of classes we offer. Catalogues are everywhere.

It will be important, once again, for you to consider your audience. With this type of publication, it is less important to consider the design or style of the piece (although it should be consistent with your image/brand) and is more important to ensure all the necessary content is available, easy to look up, and clearly described. Remember that this is a reference publication first, so pricing has to be consistent and correct. Organization is also important, so think about a table of contents or an index. Navigation icons and page numbers are also helpful.

It will also be important to release versions of your catalogue as new products or services come online or for those that are removed.

Your sales staff and distributors will come to rely on this document for accuracy. What type of information do they need access to, and how quickly does this information change?

Distribution Choices

The answer to that last question will significantly affect how many times you produce a catalogue and which production method you choose to use. If you are in an industry with high expectations of quality and color, or the product alone conveys affluence, you probably have a budget reserved for the production of your catalogue that includes a beautifully printed piece. If, on the other hand, pricing or product lines change frequently, you have probably investigated more cost-effective methods, such as PDF or HTML and distribution via the Web, FTP, or CD.

Managing Content

In any case, you have a significant amount of information to work with that is probably coming in from more than one department. Images or drawings might arrive from engineering, pricing might arrive from manufacturing, and content might arrive from marketing. You will have to manage text documents, spreadsheets, and illustrations. InDesign supports most file formats for import, but check before you begin if you suspect one of the departments submitting information might use an unsupported product. As an example, if you need to work with CAD or engineering files, you might need to investigate a filter or plug-in or open the file in a product such as Adobe Illustrator and convert it into a format that will work for you.

Production, Binding, and Finishing Considerations

Depending on the nature of the catalogue, a few things to consider include how many pages the catalogue will be. More than 64 pages will dictate something other than saddle stitching. When you get near 64 pages, the publication has a hard time remaining flat (because of the cumulative thickness of paper at the spine) and the publication's pages creep, meaning they don't all line up but creep backward with the inner pages protruding beyond the outer pages. If you are working on a large printed catalogue, you have to consider perfect binding. Talk to your print service provider about this. You will not have to do anything differently from this project, but your service provider will deal with the imposition differently.

Will this catalogue end up in a binder along with previous catalogues? If so, three-hole drilling might also factor into your layout. Make sure there is enough room in the gutter (binding area) of your layout to accommodate the drill. Bleed also adds to the cost because your printer must use a larger stock size to accommodate the bleed and trim. Perhaps you will produce the bulk of your catalogue in black and white and produce the cover in color. Speak with your service provider to find out whether they want you to build the cover in a separate file or will accept the cover and the remaining pages all in one file.

Finally, how will the recipients interact with the catalogue? Other than a look-up, will they use the catalogue to order from? Will the catalogue direct them to a phone number or a website for additional information or to place an order? In Chapter 11, "Making an Order Form," you will complete this project by creating an order form.