How to get great catalog design at little or no cost.

By Susan McIntyre

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.