Professional Catalogue Design Services

What Do You Get, Exactly?

You get a comprehensive package of professional experience and expertise surrounding your catalogue:

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’s successful in meeting its objectives and that you’re delighted with.

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 Unequalled Skills

Firstly, while we have in-depth knowledge about print design and direct marketing in general – our prime focus has always 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 led by creatives – 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 our top priority is crafting creative work we can be proud of.

Direct Contact with Your Creative Team

As a TA client you 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 as an integral part of the design process, from taking the brief to organising the print and mailing when requested.

What Do I Get, Physically?

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 in full detail.

You can check this and make any amendments, which we do and send back to you – V2s. 

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.

So you get bespoke, highly effective catalogues, on time and on budget. Catalogues that achieve better results, and build your Brand profile as well as selling your products.

Improvements You’ll Appreciate

You get a smoother process with much less load upon your internal resources, bringing benefits to every part of your business.

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

Your catalogues develop into powerful and trusted marketing tools that you can use in different situations to enhance orders, and to successfully differentiate your company in the marketplace.

Benefits for Your Bottom Line

After the first catalogue, you’ll find so many time-saving benefits.

• Briefing us takes even less time.
• We seem to read your mind, with first designs on point.
• We give you creative solutions that achieve what you wanted, in a more elegant and impactful way than you’d imagined.

All this can improve 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. 

We also 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 an agency with an unrivalled track record and experience won’t significantly improve your catalogues, then we’re unlikely to convince you to choose TA Design, compared to:

• An overworked inhouse person.
• A generalist designer/artworker at a printer.
• A digital agency with little experience of design for print.

But choose us and you can look forward to the unfair advantages over your competitors that 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 quite straightforward:

1. When you enquire we’ll give you an outline proposal including a creative estimate and schedule.
2. We create design concepts for a catalogue spread, front cover and introductory spread.
3. We work together to produce a pagination (content listing by page) for the catalogue.
4. You give us the images and copy reference.
5. We design and write the complete catalogue and send it to you as a PDF.
6. You make any amendments you’d like.
7. We revise the designs until we’re all happy, then send the files to the printer.

The Creative Process in Focus

We strongly believe that the best catalogues are created when there is 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 customers and/or prospects.
•  We explore the tone of voice you want, and the USPs and benefits you want to communicate.
•  We create design concepts, which we discuss together, revise if necessary and agree.
•  The creative concepts and the pagination form the palette from which we design the complete catalogue.
•  There are no surprises, as we’ve already agreed what goes where, and what it will look like.

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.

Printing and Mailing: It can typically take around 2-3 weeks from printer receiving files to catalogue on doormat.

How Do You Know What’s Going On?

We’re great believers in keeping each other informed at all times:

• If either of us has specific questions or requests, then a phone call or email.
• When there is creative work to present, we’ll let you know and send the actual PDFs via WeTransfer or DropBox.
•  If you’d like more of a discussion, then we’d say a Teams or Zoom meeting.

Q1: What size catalogues do you design?

A: Any size. 

We can design any size of catalogue or brochure  from 12 pages to 400 pages, with a page size usually between A5 and A4.

The A4 catalogues are typically for business to business.

We also design catalogues with custom-size pages, and for the USA where they have different preferred page sizes.

The smaller catalogues or leaflets – with many different sizes and folding types – are often used in the mail packs we create as part of a direct marketing campaign, 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 client wants a refresh or revamp of their Guidelines.
• The client has Guidelines for digital, but that don’t cover print.
• The business is young and hasn’t felt the need to formalise their Guidelines.

We can create or update <Brand Guidelines> <link to Brand Positioning SEO page>, or give advice on what should be included.

We’re often asked to create a new catalogue, then design style sheets so the client’s website can be matched to the new catalogue design – and equally, we’ve worked with “Match to our website.” as the Brand Guidelines reference.

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, and we’re also happy to team up with suppliers you already work with.

We are completely independent, so we can get estimates for you from the selection of printers and mail houses our clients have worked with successfully.

We can also work with the chosen printer and mail house to ensure the agreed schedule is kept to.

Q4: What file formats do you provide?

A: Invariably PDFs.

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

We can 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 that page in your website.

We truly love creating vibrant, new catalogues of every description, and we’re more than happy to chat through your plans with you and give you the benefit of our experience, including a free insight or two.  

You can also contact us to request a session of our renowned Catalogue Design Clinic where we review your current catalogue or print items – free of charge – and give you pointers as to how we think it should be developed, with no obligation:

Call Bobbie on 01273 72 40 40

Call James on 07900 540 532

Email [email protected]

Or click the 'Contact us' button below and fill in the simple form.

Ask about our FREE online Catalogue Review Clinics

We're excited to hear from you and look forward to working with you to turn
your vision into a solid and successful reality - let's have a chat today!