Have you ever made a cataloge

[dazzul]

Just looking at UniSub's http://www.unisub.com/products/catalog/ ... atalog.pdf

And i was wondering if any of you have ever made a PDF catalouge for people to download/print?

Or are you more of a portfolio kind of person?

The reason i ask is im a print broker, so i can get them done cheap, but would it be worth it really? Unless advertising B2B

Thanks
Daz

[pisquee]

Doing one at this very moment ready for Home & Gift tradeshow next week. Will have a few copies on the stand for reference, but will mainly be sending them out as PDFs to people who ask - good way to get their contact details into the mailing list!
We're usually making new products/designs right up to the first day of the show, so it's hard to have everything photographed and a catalogue designed in time, let alone getting it sent off to a printers. It is something we're aiming for at our next trade show though (Pulse)

[dazzul]

Could i ask what you are using to design it, ive never done a products catalouge.


Daz

[smo]

We produce 1, sometimes 2 catalogues every year and have done for the past 21 years - these are printed though and then distributed to our active customers in spring and autumn. We also make these available to download on our website as pdf's.

[dazzul]

I just tried one via publisher and a data merge, just crashed.

[smo]

Publisher = bad!

[dazzul]

What can you recommend ?

[smo]

Indesign is probably the industry standard these days, it used to be Quark but that seems to have taken a dive in the last 5+ years.

Personally until this year we've always employed a designer to do it for us, to keep costs down I'm considering doing it myself this year but might regret that idea!!!

[dazzul]

Yeah i looked at indesign but ive never used it and it has lots of buttons :S

[pisquee]

I'm just using Photoshop, which is doing the job quite well. I use Publisher for some things, but with the amount of images I'm playing around with, PS is better suited (These are the only two programmes I have available.)
We have around 200 products/designs which I am currently shuffling around on 12 pages.
Start set up for show tomorrow.
already have one stockist wanting to place an order asap, and emailing me twice a day for the catalogue and price list!