J1
Member
Registered: 9th May 02
Location: Bedfordshire
User status: Offline
|
My boss wants me to explore possible solutions to producing an electronic catalogue/brochure. I've entertained the idea of flash with page turners or using layer comps to produce an interactive pdf but i was just wondering if there was anything people had done in the past that was particularly effective and looked really good.
Cheers for any suggestions
|
Brett
Premium Member
Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
User status: Offline
|
Put it on a CD Business card for cool factor 
|
J1
Member
Registered: 9th May 02
Location: Bedfordshire
User status: Offline
|
Thats pretty cool, you'd need to produce in flash first though and im looking for some kinda cool/trendy flash effects other than a boring page turner
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
What sort of products you selling?
If its just normal stuff (i.e. you're not a marketing company) then dont go for anything too fancy where you have to turn the pages, etc. etc. as it just gets boring after a while.
|
J1
Member
Registered: 9th May 02
Location: Bedfordshire
User status: Offline
|
no its for a company selling motorsport products
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
I wouldnt mess about with anything fancy then, just make it look good and function in an efficient way rather than go all fancy.
|
J1
Member
Registered: 9th May 02
Location: Bedfordshire
User status: Offline
|
what would you suggest off the top of your head
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
Look at popular catalogues your competitiors have (demon tweeks and the such), then figure out what the best points are and improve on them.
IMO the main points are...a simple layout, categorised in an easily identifiable way, good images (multiple?) of the products and plenty of information about the product.
|
ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
|
How about....
A WEBSITE 
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
with downloadable pdf catalogue
|
Butler
Member
Registered: 2nd Jun 05
Location: London
User status: Offline
|
Why should people download a catalogue why cant they just view it online?
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
quote:
Originally posted by Butler
Why should people download a catalogue why cant they just view it online?
To view offline of course.
|
ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
|
... and no bloomin' annoying Flash animations.
With a website you're platform independent. If you put in the odd bit of fancyness using Javascript you've got a much higher compatibility percentage than using an optional plugin.
If you're sending out DVD's or CD's with data on, your bandwidth is automatically limited to size of the disk. What happens when your prices change? You have to worry about them being Vista, 7, XP, Mac, Linux compatible. What happens if you need to use a DVD to get all the data on and your customer only has a CD ROM, e.t.c...
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
What happens when they've a mac book air with no CD drive 
|
ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
|
Or their office uses thin client and they don't even have a PC
|
deano87
Member
Registered: 21st Oct 06
Location: Bedfordshire Drives: Ford Fiesta
User status: Offline
|
I looked into this for the case studies at work. We decided on a simple 4 page .PDF. If you want to make it more interactive, have hyperlinks within the PDF to make navigating easier.
One bit of advice. The case studies were initially going to be printed, therefore design in 'Portrait' orientation. However, when viewing portrait in PDF, there is a lot of scrolling involved and gets tedious. Also, with PDF, when the bottom of the page is on the screen, the next scroll will go to the next page. Bit of a pain. The solution? Do it in landscape. That way any end user doesn't do much scrolling and if they have it on Page View or 100%, the majority can still be seen 
Also have the prices next to the products, don't have separate price page, as this is just damn annoying.
|
ed
Member
Registered: 10th Sep 03
User status: Offline
|
Even a PDF is pretty limiting. To make it portable, the image resolutions have to be pretty poop.
|
Butler
Member
Registered: 2nd Jun 05
Location: London
User status: Offline
|
I dont think anything offline really works, or know of anything to hand that has worked??
|
Cosmo
Member
Registered: 29th Mar 01
Location: Im the real one!
User status: Offline
|
quote:
Originally posted by Butler
I dont think anything offline really works, or know of anything to hand that has worked??
I know loads that work. Infact I have a few downloaded that I go through as its easier and quicker for me to look through that than to go online and get on their webpage then find what Im looking for.
|
