catalog chasm
• Communication There is nothing more critical to doing successful big book projects than good communication. There will be a lot of peo- ple contributing to the project on both your company’s team and the design team. Some things simply cannot be ex- plained by writing a note in the margin. While there may be a fair amount of time spent communicating in the early phases, the time needed will decrease in the later phases as the production team starts to handle many of the “loose ends” on their own, because this isn’t new to them.
• Trust
With so much information and graphics, no one can check every single item. To have a successful project, every page must be created to be as good as it can be in iso- lation as well as fit in with the overarching construct or plan. The design firm must therefore act to produce the best product knowing that some items will not be litmus-tested until after the catalog goes to press. Trust plays a key role, and established standards should never be relaxed to meet a deadline.
• Learning Community A design firm learns quite a lot about the
subject matter as the project goes for- ward. The learning by each person at the firm gets integrated into a learning com- munity and, as time goes by, provides them with a very important tool: knowing when something is clearly wrong, incon- sistent or makes no sense based on other data being valid. This also provides the de- sign firm with a forum to challenge an ed- itorial approach in favor of something that is more reader friendly, thus improving the project’s outcome.
• Project Tracking
Page content will come in via many sources: Excel spreadsheets, Word docu- ments, marked-up printouts, sometimes even notes on napkins. The content must be tracked using an established process that permits any person involved to have access to the status and location of any part of the catalog at any time. Three good things come from this: 4Everyone involved is held accountable (crucial) 4All content makes it into the layout 4Technical experts (who are extremely busy) can plan their review schedules
• Likeability Chances are your catalog designers and
you are going to be spending a lot of time together. Make sure you like the people with whom you are choosing to work. They might even tell you some interesting catalog stories along the way. Don’t underestimate this one. There is so much more to know about good catalog design, more than can be addressed on this forum. Hire a great, experienced, and likeable catalog design company, and they will teach you what you need to know. Their leadership will take the biggest and scariest project you will ever undertake and whittle it down to size, leaving you with the best possible marketing tool for you and your product. So, I know what you are thinking,
how did the rim-to-rim trek go? Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but we did our research and the plans are made. Come next September, when the sun casts long shadows on many parts of the canyon, making the hiking just a bit cooler, we’ll be heading down the South Kaibab Trail, not too many steps behind our guide.
Based in Pittsburgh, Zoltun Design special- izes in graphic design for varied media, in- cluding print design, Web site and interactive design, and catalog design. Learn more at
www.zoltun.com4
4
9 MADE in PA 2011
management focus
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