Professional Catalogue Design Services

What Will You Get, Exactly?

You get a comprehensive package of expertise surrounding your catalogue:

We outline, agree and schedule the plan, and then begin the creative work. We present you with creative concepts, and after that the design for the complete catalogue with all content included – words and pictures.

Finally, the files are sent to the printer for printing – along with any other elements such as letter or paperwrap – that are being included in the mail pack.

Person to Person, Professional to Professional

Our approach is always positive and enthusiastic. Our mission in a nutshell is to:

• Understand our clients and what you require.
• Advise you honestly and objectively, as an expert and fresh pair of eyes.
• Work with you to create the very best catalogue – that is successful in meeting its objectives and that you’re delighted with.

Our measurement of success is your positive reactions. We’re proud of the fact that the quality of our work means we have long-term relationships with so many of our clients.

A Unique Heritage, with Unique Skills

Firstly, while we have in-depth knowledge about print design and direct marketing in general – our prime focus is and always has been creating catalogues for a huge range of clients.

Secondly, we create bespoke catalogues that accurately reflect your company’s brand positioning and tone of voice – while retaining that essential humanity.

Thirdly, TA Design has always been creative-led – one of the key things that make us different to the few other agencies in the country that say they can design catalogues.

This means that our creative director is also the boss. And this means that our top priority is crafting creative work we can be proud of.

Direct Contact with Your Creatives

TA Design clients always have direct access to the designer and copywriter team working on your catalogue – this lack of barriers is one of the many things our clients value. 

Not least because our senior creative team has great experience in <project managing> <link to Project Management SEO page>, as an integral part of the design process, from taking the brief to organising the print and mailing when requested.

What Do I Get?

Firstly, you get the design concepts we create for you. This is a set of PDFs of a typical catalogue spread and front cover, showing how we see your catalogue looking and reading.

When we’ve agreed the concepts and the pagination (what goes on each page) we design and copywrite the catalogue, and then send you a set of PDFs – V1s – showing you every page of the catalogue. 

You can check this and make any amendments you might want. We then send you an updated set of PDFs – V2s – and so on. It’s very rarely that this process goes on beyond V3s.

When everyone’s happy, we do our final checks and make a set of final PDFs and it’s off to the printer.

And There’s More

But more than this, our senior team becomes an ongoing part of your team, always available for a consultation, to be a sounding board, to provide the solution to a problem, or help with a key decision. 

We can advise on the most efficient page size and number of pages for printing and postage. On the different methods of delivery. On how to integrate print and digital marketing. Whatever questions you may have.

Real Results From Skilled Professionals

You get catalogues delivered by people whose top priority it is, who don’t have lots of other things they have to do, like keeping the website updates, sourcing new products, daily emails and social media posts.

You get bespoke, highly effective catalogues, on time and on budget, that get better results, and build your Brand profile as well as selling your products – successfully differentiating your company in the marketplace.

Improvements You’ll Appreciate

You get a smoother process, with much less load upon your internal resources, particularly after the first catalogue, which brings benefits to every part of your business.

You get intelligent and helpful observations and input at every stage of the creative process, with suggestions and improvements added into the creative mix, with our thinking explained, for you to approve or decline.

Your catalogues will develop into powerful and trusted marketing tools that you can use in different situations to enhance orders.

Benefits for Your Bottom Line

Once we’ve worked together on the first catalogue, you’ll find so many time-saving benefits. 

• There’s no need to explain your Brand Guidelines or Brand Positioning to us again.
• Briefing us on your catalogues takes far less time.
• We start to seemingly read your mind, doing things the way you wanted us to.
• We give you design solutions for specific spreads that achieve what you wanted, but in a better, more elegant or impactful way than you’d imagined. 

All this positively impacts your bottom line by releasing your internal resources to do what they do best.

And while we can’t share specific financial results from our clients, the number of times our testimonials mention ‘targets significantly exceeded’ and ‘good value’ are significant pointers.

And clients do share more results in their confidential entries into industry awards, and we’ve been on too many shortlists and won too many awards for our positive impact on bottom lines not to be a significant factor.

It’s also the case that we enjoy long-term relationships with so many of our clients. And however nice we may be, clients won’t stay if they’re not seeing a financial benefit to choosing TA Design!

Beating Your Competitors

If you don’t agree that choosing a specialist catalogue design agency with an unequalled track record and databank of experience won’t significantly improve your catalogues, then we’re unlikely to convince you to use TA Design.

But if you appreciate the competitive edge that working with a highly-skilled, specialist creative team gives you, compared to:

• An overworked inhouse person, creatively worn down by only working on one company’s catalogues for years.
• A designer working at a printer, who’s inevitably a jack of all trades.
• An agency that focuses on digital marketing with little experience of design for print.
• Even a direct marketing agency that produces mail packs and flyers, but that in fact has only produced a handful of actual catalogues.

– then you can look forward to the unfair advantages over your competitors that choosing TA Design will bring you:

• A bespoke catalogue that scintillates with your company’s personality and USPs.
• A beautiful catalogue that is simple to navigate and a pleasure to browse.
• An effective catalogue with clear and compelling selling messages for your products.

The Catalogue Design Process: Step by Step

It’s actually quite straightforward: 

1. You contact us to enquire about our services.
2. We give you an outline proposal including a creative estimate and an initial schedule. 
3. We create design concepts for a typical catalogue spread, front cover and possibly the introductory spread.
4. We work together to produce a pagination (page listing) for the catalogue. 
5. You give us the high-resolution images and copy reference for the catalogue.
6. We design and write the complete catalogue and send it to you in PDF form.
7. You make any amendments you’d like.
8. We revise the designs until we’re all happy. 
9. We make final checks and send the PDFs to the printer.
10. We can organise the printing and mailing on your behalf.

The Creative Process in Focus: From Brief to Printer

We strongly believe that the best catalogues are created when there is a clear dialogue between client and agency:

• We start by discussing what you want from your catalogue, in terms of the products and the brand positioning – how you want to appear to your clients and prospects. 
• We explore the tone of voice you want, the USPs and benefits you want to communicate, and any offers you wish to make.
• We then create some design concepts, which we discuss together, revise if necessary and agree.
• You provide us with the reference for the content – and a listing of the contents page by page, or pagination, for the catalogue.
• This pagination and the agreed creative concepts form the palette from which we design the complete catalogue.
• There will be no surprises, as we have already agreed what goes where, and what it will look like. You then make any amends to these V1s, which we would put into effect.
• When everyone is happy, we make high resolution printer PDF files for supply to the printer.

How Long Does it Take?

This depends on:

• How many pages the catalogue has.
• How much information each page is to have on it. 

We can give you a verbal estimate of timing as soon as you’ve given us some initial information.

Example Timings

Here are some typical timings with things going smoothly, although we can always work faster if necessary:

A 36-page catalogue: From detailed brief to final files to printer – 4-5 weeks. 

A 204-page catalogue: From detailed brief to final files to printer – 10-12 weeks.

Printers typically take 1-2 weeks to print.

Mail houses take up to 1 week to sort the data, laser personalise and collate ready for posting.

Mailing from mail house to doorstep can take 1 week.

How Do You Know What’s Going On?

We’re great believers in keeping each other informed at all times, and we’re happy to update you as frequently as you like: 

• If either of us have questions or requests, or a specific issue, then an email or phone call.
• When there is creative work to present, we send an email to let you know, and send the actual PDFs via WeTransfer.
• If you’d like to change the brief or timing, or to discuss some creative concepts, then we’d suggest a Teams or Zoom meeting.

Q1: What size catalogues do you design?

A: Any size. 

We can design any size of catalogue or <brochure> <to Brochure SEO page> – but obviously the larger the catalogue the more time it can take! 

We’ve created catalogues from 12 pages to 400 pages, with a page size usually between A5 and A4. The A4 catalogues of over 100 pages are typically for business to business, which can have a more technical content. 

We’ve also designed catalogues with custom-size pages and for the USA, where optimum page sizes for American printers are slightly different.

The smaller catalogues or leaflets – with many different sizes and folding types – are often used in a mail pack as part of a <direct marketing campaign> <to Direct Marketing SEO page>, often with a covering letter and an outer envelope, polywrap or paperwrap.

Q2: Can you work with our existing Brand Guidelines?

A: Certainly.

The majority of our clients over the years have a Brand Guidelines document, which we’re naturally happy to follow.

But sometimes:

• The Guidelines have become out of date.
• The client wants a refresh or revamp of their Guidelines – either before or after talking with us.
• The company has Guidelines for digital, but that don’t cover print.
• The business is new, or small and growing, and hasn’t felt the need to formalise their Guidelines.

In all these cases, we can create or update <Brand Guidelines> <link to Brand Positioning SEO page>, or give advice on what should be included.

We have worked with “Match to our website.” as the Brand Guidelines reference – and equally, we’ve also been asked to create a look for a new catalogue, and then design some style sheets so the digital team can match the website to the new catalogue design.

Whatever works best for you.

Q3: Do you handle catalogue printing?

A: Yes. 

If you prefer, we can manage the entire printing, personalising and mail out process for you. Equally, we are happy to team up with suppliers you already work with. 

As an agency we are completely independent, so we have a selection of printers and mail houses our clients have worked with successfully, and enjoyed good quality and service.

We can get estimates for you, and work with the chosen printer and mail house to ensure the agreed schedule is kept to.

Q4: What file formats do you provide?

A: PDFs.

All printers nowadays work to the high-resolution PDF standard, and this is the file format we provide.

More and more frequently, we also send a PDF version of the catalogue that you can display in your website. Each product in this version can have a link to the page in your website for that product.