Cut-rate Layouts

It really is possible for catalog design costs to occasionally approach zero, without sacrificing sales. And doing so can be a stimulating challenge.

All in the Family

We’d been going over the catalog budget estimate for hours, line by line. I was familiar with how tight-fisted this client was, and I’d already cut his estimate to the bone. But he kept probing for tricks to cut even more.

“Why is design so high? It’s just putting photos and copy on a page. My nephew who knows Quark can do that,” the client said.

“Well, there’s more to it than that. It takes a skilled, experienced catalog designer to create a design that sells well. You do want your catalog to sell well, don’t you?”

“OK, you’ve convinced me,” he shot back. “I’ll pay the designer to design a page. Once my nephew sees it, he can design the rest.”

While the above true story isn’t the best route to create a catalog that sells, taking some design in-house actually can be a good avenue for the budget-conscious cataloger ... if it’s done carefully.

I know a savvy cataloger with a good eye. He’s no designer, but he collects samples of other catalog designs that he feels work well. When it’s time to design his next catalog, he shows his Quark/PhotoShop technician how each idea can be applied to his own catalog’s pages and products. This cataloger must devote a substantial amount of time and thought to the process of working through all the pages with his technician. But his catalog is new, and for the time being, he has more time than money. Plus, the design cycle takes place during his catalog’s slow season when he can devote more time to it. So his current system works well for him.

Another cataloger does a major redesign every few years, but only modifies the catalog’s design slightly in the between years. In those “slight-modification” years, the company hires an outside designer to revitalize covers and a few other important pages such as the opening spread on pages two and three.

But for the rest of the book, the in-house technician picks up last year’s pages, swaps new products into the holes left by discontinued products, and makes all other minor image-sizing, price and copy changes. After two or three years, the outside designer again refreshes the entire book with an updated design. This system has worked well, and the catalog has continued to grow each year.

One Man’s Garbage is Another Man’s Treasure

I was turning the pages in a designer’s portfolio. Frankly, I’d been hoping to see more creativity. My best designers were booked solid on other jobs. But the client needed cutting-edge design now, and couldn’t wait for my designers to be free, so I was looking for a freelancer.

I stopped at a portfolio sketch, riveted. “This is great; where’s the final printed sample?”

“My client hated this idea — said it was too far out,” the designer lamented. “I had to design this humdrum piece instead. Clients won’t let me do interesting work.”

“But this sketch is just the look we’ve been searching for,” I said. “Could you make it work for a tool catalog? And could you start tomorrow?”

Using rejected ideas can be a real time- and money-saver. Just be sure the rejected ideas are good ones. We once commissioned a designer to do extensive research on typography. The client was a well-funded cataloger who likes to freshen her catalog’s look every few years. This particular year she wanted to update all her typography. After studying many sample pages we’d mocked up with various font choices, she selected her favorite. Among the rejects was one she thought was too funky for her brand.

Later, a very tight-budgeted cataloger wanted to reposition its brand to stand out from its competition — and a funky look was just what it needed. We unearthed Well-Funded’s type rejects, and Tight-Budget loved the funky reject, thereby getting a new-look font for no more than the cost of the font itself, and spending zero for research or mockups.

Another cataloger asked a designer for more cover ideas than were needed, so he could select the best. Frequently, several ideas are so good it’s hard to decide among them. Normally, rejected ideas get filed and forgotten. But this cataloger saves those good ideas for next time, sometimes eliminating the expense of a new round of cover designs.

The Phantom Designer

”Our catalog design was a disaster last year. We fired the manager who let this happen,” a cataloger said.

I murmured sympathetically as I held the merchant’s prior catalog in my hand. The design really was dreadful.

“We need you to give us an all-new design this year,” he said.

I agreed and assured him I could help. “It needs to be highly upscale, creative, really different and eye-catching — like a piece of art.” I started feeling heady. Not only would this infuse his brand with new life, but this project also was going to be fun. I already was thinking of which great designer I could work with on his catalog.

He caught my enthusiasm and smiled. “Just one more thing. Since sales were so bad last year, we can’t afford a designer. You can do this without the expense of a designer, right?”

Sound impossible? Not entirely. Although I love working with a great designer, surprisingly there are other ways to get top-flight design without having to pay top dollar. But you need to be a bit crafty and heed all the details.

For example, a gift cataloger needed a major design overhaul. But her budget was so tight she could afford only a few hours with the top-flight designer she wanted to use. Rather than convince her to use a cheaper designer, which would risk down-scaling her book and losing sales, we minimized the designer’s time.

Before design, we researched design elements we believed would increase sales, such as a color palette from a past best-selling catalog and a headline treatment from a magazine her customers love. We asked the designer to bundle many of these design elements into a layout and to make his layout a tight template that even an inexperienced designer couldn’t foul up. He gave us a beautiful design — but just one spread. His layout template was so rigid we could pass it to a young or cheaper production designer.

By adding one round of quick review and revisions from the expensive designer, we ended up with a beautiful, inexpensive catalog and record sales for our client.

There are other ways in which design templates can save money. One successful cataloger with a 100-plus-page book simply doesn’t have time for a single great designer to complete all design in time. Instead, a team of (mostly young) designers works on the book, building all pages to a prescribed template and style sheet. The lead (experienced) designer controls the evolution of the design template each year, and reviews all pages from the design team before submitting them for client approval.

Talk is Cheap

One of the biggest design expenses comes in making revisions. Usually, revisions aren’t due to a lot of price changes, but to hating the design. Takeaway tip: A good technique for getting a design you like without having the designer rework it over and over is to talk more and draw less. Before design ever starts, mark up your old catalog with what you do and don’t like. Mark up other companies’ catalogs, too. Look for patterns. Ask your designer to do the same, then talk (and talk and talk) about all your examples until you have a meeting of the minds. You should find that your revision expenses plummet.

Susan J. McIntyre is president of McIntyre Direct, a full-service catalog agency and consulting firm based in Portland, OR. She can be reached at (503) 286-1400.