Producing a Catalog Written by Maricon Williams
Before you can produce a catalog, you must undergo first planning stage. In planning stage, you envision your objective. What do you want to communicate? What tone or ambiance is necessary to make objective apparent? Another thing that you should consider is audience. Knowing potential readers may help you create and communicate message, tone and identity that you want. The next thing to ask is who will be designer? Looking for a designer is hard because only few designers of design companies specialize in catalog. A good designer will give you style you are looking for but an unskilled catalog designer will create technical difficulties resulting in cost overruns and delays. If you have already chosen a designer, do not forget to choose an expert photographer in connection to catalog. The last thing to consider in planning stage is budget. Seek help from catalog designers or producers so that your catalog will fit within your budget.After planning, decide on initial design considerations. This includes kind of catalog you want to create, number of products you want to appear per page, number of pieces you want to be printed and other details such as envelope, index, table of contents, sales terms and likes. Now you can set schedule. Producing a catalog is like taking a long road trip. Efficient planning will keep you on track, on time and within budget. Usually, creation of a new catalog takes about two months for design and photography. Revised catalogs can take less time depending on degree of modification.
| | Valuable Tips for Catalog PrintingWritten by Maricon Williams
Basic knowledge is a vital factor to save you money and avoid delays in your printing needs. So to give you this familiarity with basic information and to keep you away from printing dilemmas, here are some valuable tips that you should consider.Let us start with press types and their distinctions. A web press, which is specifically designed to print rolls of paper, can print extensively faster than a sheet fed press. On other hand, intricacy of web press means more effort to setup and run. If your catalog or book can meet certain minimums of quantity and page count, along with using paper formats available in web form, you can take advantage of savings faster web press allows. In general, catalogs of 16 printed in a quantity of as low as 5,000 will be cost-effective on a web press. With regards to page count, if you can finesse your page count to increments of 32 pages for standard format (8-3/8" x 10-7/8") or 64 for digest format (5-3/8" x 8-3/8") you can save substantial cost by printing on an eight-unit web press which is competent of running two webs simultaneously. It means that labor time will be slashed to 50%. Standard four- to six-unit web presses can only print single webs or 16 pages in standard format. You must use 60# or lighter basis weight stock for utmost efficiency. In connection to page size, you can save a substantial amount of money on your printing by designing for a somewhat smaller page width. A 7-3/8" page width instead of standard 8-3/8" page width means printer can buy 31" rolls of paper instead of 35" rolls. Your job will need about 10% less paper. Since paper is a large percentage of your printing cost, your savings on it can be momentous. Your freight and mailing costs should also be lessened.
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