BCN —:— Diagnostic
[ Overview ]

Catalogue design

Catalogue design that makes a complex product legible and helps the sales team hold a better-prepared conversation.

Editorial

[ Overview ]

The approach is defined before it becomes a set of screens.

What it needs to solve
Catalogue design

The project starts with the decision the digital presence needs to support, the information behind it and the operations the team needs to sustain. This way, design and technology respond to a specific need.

[ A clear way of working ]

A clear way of working

01

Context before form

Proposition, audience, content and objectives are organised before a visual direction is set.

02

Structure that supports

Navigation, content and actions are shaped around the questions that arise throughout the journey.

03

A foundation that evolves

The system is prepared so the team can maintain and extend it with sound judgement.

[ Overview ]

Let’s discuss the project

  • Analysis of context, audience and starting point
  • Information architecture and content priorities
  • Visual direction, interface and development
  • Measurement, maintenance and ongoing evolution
[ For this assignment ]

Catalogue design

Strategy, content, design and implementation are organised around the organisation’s context. Decisions are documented so the team has a clear foundation for launch, maintenance and future development.

[ In detail ]

Catalogue design

A catalogue is a sales tool, not a brochure

A well-made catalogue answers questions in the order they come up during a sales conversation: what it is, what it is for, how it differs, what sizes exist, what I need to know before ordering. When the order is right, the salesperson can lean on it instead of apologising for it. When the catalogue is organised by the company’s internal product families, the customer finds nothing and the conversation still rests on the seller’s memory.

Technical information without drowning the page

The real problem in catalogue design is fitting a lot of data on a page without making it unreadable. It is solved with hierarchy, not by removing information: one level for skimming, one for comparing and a table for whoever has already decided. All three coexist if the grid was built for it. Shrinking the type until everything fits is the solution that produces catalogues nobody uses.

Print and digital from one source

A catalogue usually needs a printed version, a PDF to email and sometimes content on the website. Producing them separately guarantees they will disagree within six months. Designing from a shared structure, with the data in one place, allows all three to be generated and updated without redoing the work. When the catalogue changes every season, this stops being a convenience and becomes the only sustainable approach.

[ FAQ ]

Before deciding

What do you need before starting?

To know who you want to look different from, and why. It helps to gather what already exists (even if you dislike it), where the brand is applied today and which pieces have to be produced this year regardless.

How is the scope of Catalogue design defined?

By applications, not by number of proposals. We agree where the identity has to work — formats, sizes, materials, who will apply it — and that determines what gets designed and what gets documented.

How many routes are presented?

Few, and argued. Presenting six directions without a point of view hands the decision to the client without giving them the tools. One defended direction, plus the variants that were genuinely in play.

How do you know the identity holds up?

By testing it where it will be used: small, in a single ink, over photography, on a screen and across the material that already exists. A brand that only works in the deck is not finished.

How is the result measured?

By whether the organisation can apply it without asking, and whether it is recognised before the name is read. Both show up in the months after, not in the handover meeting.

What is delivered at the end?

Open and closed files, a manual proportionate to the size of the company, and templates for what gets used every week. A hundred-page PDF nobody opens is not a delivery.

[ Related work ]

Related work

A selection of work showing context, decisions and outcomes.

Noble Fortune
Noble Fortune
Immobarceló
Immobarceló
Dabeer
Dabeer
[ Where to go next ]

What usually comes next

[ Let’s discuss the project ]

Let’s discuss the project

Tell us where things stand and we can assess the most useful approach for the project.