How to Make a Product Catalog
A product catalog is designed to display your company's wares and provide handy information on their specifications. Customers can use your product catalog to identify what they might need, budget their purchases and order goods more easily. The catalogs can be distributed at trade shows, mailed to regular customers and sent out with orders to encourage repeat business. With the right equipment and a little practice, anyone can make a viable product catalog.
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Instructions
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1
Inventory all of the products you wish to include in your product catalog. Organize them by type, by model, by name or in whatever way you feel is most appropriate. Write down all of the pertinent information for each product, including its size, components, packaging, order number and cost.
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2
Take pictures of each of your products.The photos should be clear and sharp, allowing customers to see exactly what the product is and what it does. You may wish to take pictures from different angles to show every side of the product. Lay the product on a white or dark sheet (whichever one helps it stand out more) and raise the sheet behind it using chair backs or something similar, to remove any details from the background. There should be as few other objects in the picture as possible (ideally nothing, though a stand or holder may be necessary if the product requires it).
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3
Contact a printer and ask about the specifics of printing up a catalog. They will tell you what dimensions they offer, what stock paper they use, and how many pages your catalog needs to be. (Books are usually printed in page multiples of four, eight, 12 or 16). You can negotiate a price for the print run based on how many copies you want and what your overall budget is.
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4
Lay out your product catalog based on the parameters stipulated by your printer. Use layout software designed for the job, such as InDesign or Photoshop, which are both user-friendly and easy to master with a little practice. Each page should include a series of boxes detailing the product you offer. The boxes should include the picture of each product, the specifications (including price) and perhaps a little ad copy to help sell it. The catalog should also contain a brief list of all of your products (taking up no more than a page or two), an order form to let customers mail in orders, contact information for your business (including the mailing address, customer-service phone numbers and website address) and a table of contents, if applicable. You might also want to include a short introduction on the first page and a colorful cover that draws the eye (and includes your company logo, if possible).
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5
Double-check your catalog for any typos, mistakes or graphic errors. Errors in the text can be easy to miss, yet they can convey a shoddy, unprofessional impression you definitely don't want to give your customers. Pay particular attention to ordering numbers, contact information and the cost of each product: You don't want to list a $2 item as $200 (or vice versa).
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Send your completed product catalog to the printer in whatever manner they have specified.
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Tips & Warnings
If the cover or packaging of your products is their most important feature, make sure your pictures reflect the cover rather than the product as a whole. For example, if your company sells books, the catalog can be jpegs or computer images of the book covers, rather than photographs of the books themselves.
While you can perform all of these steps yourself, it's recommended that you use professionals if at all possible. This is especially pertinent for Step 2, which will benefit from a photographer who knows exactly what he's doing, and Step 4, in which a serious graphic designer can help the catalog look as pleasing as possible.
