Creative Cut: Nautical Cataloger Doesn’t Sail Deep Enough Into the Water

Use cover copy that pinpoints your identity. In this case, the copy, “The world’s leading marine navigational resource,” is buried on the back cover. Move it to the front cover as a tag below the logo to immediately tell customers who you are and why they need what you sell.

Clean Up the Design, Let the Product Shine
Rules, bars and outlines are great visual tools when employed with care. But these can be a disaster when overused. In the case of the spread on pgs. 90 and 91 (shown below), the excessive outlining of photos, bars between sections and rules around copy make the design look more like an old-fashioned B-to-B catalog than a consumer book. In addition, they take away from the product, which should be the star of the page.