Case Study
A Product Catalog’s Come Back Story
The Situation:
A large distributor imports a nice line of outdoor furniture and accessories. The key to success for the product is pre-booking by their customers, through a printed catalog.
Previous catalogs were (let’s be kind here) unappealing, with muted colors, crude placement of product photos on backgrounds, and visually disorganized. The distributor wanted a more appealing catalog with a “high end” look that reflected the quality of their products, and they needed it on a tight deadline.
The Catch:
As with all good come-back stories, we had a few obstacles in our way. While most high-end catalogs are built around staged photos containing beautiful products complete with beautiful people in exotic environments, our customers’ products were not even manufactured yet. So we only had rudimentary product photos taken by the manufacturers.
The PPI Solution:
Our design team looked the challenge in the eye and went to work. First they developed an overall look for the catalog that would make it vibrant, colorful and appealing.
Then came hours of tedious work. Appealing photo backgrounds were selected that matched perspective with product photos. Product photos were then “cut out” of existing backgrounds and placed on the selected photo backgrounds and finished out with appropriate shadows and shading.
Of course, a catalog is not complete without detailed information such as product descriptions, pricing, and.sku numbers, all of which was checked and double-checked by us and by the customer.
Along the way we fed the customer a sampling of pages to make sure they agreed with our design direction, and the customer was thrilled with the finished product. An exact quote: “. . . it turned out beautifully – they [our design team] should be proud of it.”
Takeaways from this project:
- Four members of our design team were involved in this catalog design. We have the firepower to complete large projects in a timely manner.
- Our design team is certainly capable of beautiful design, but they are also meticulous about detail
- Despite large design obstacles, our design team persisted to find a way to satisfy the customer.
