Archive for 'General' Category

Knowing About Catalog Printing Mistakes

If you are just about to start your own catalog printing endeavor, or maybe you are a professional that just needs a little refresher then we have a good guide for you here. Below you will find a few common mistake people make when they print catalogs. Hopefully you can learn from these mistakes and you can improve how your whole catalog printing process works.

Lack of Planning
This is one of the most common mistakes we have seen in catalog printing. Some shop owners think catalog printing is as simple as taking pictures, writing notes and then sending it off to the printers. This is wrong. This will lead them to an extended process of question and answers with the catalog printing company. Questions like the dimensions, paper quality, paper type, color combinations will take time to figure out, and the printer and the shop owner will just waste time in doing so since there was no planning stage.

The design will also suffer from this, since a catalog design should be well thought out with considerations for the catalog printing budget, the target market and of course the products being sold. If the catalog has not been planned well from the beginning you may end up with an increased cost to catalog printing, less than satisfactory sales and products that is misrepresented in the catalog. To put it simply, when you do not plan this thoroughly it will be a mess.

Wrong Concept
Another common error in catalog printing is a failed design concept. Catalogs, like brochures and posters should have a design concept that fits your market and your products. Some people make the mistake in using one design concept for different types of markets. For example, high-end luxury products should usually have a more elegant and sophisticated design. You do not use a “cartoon” concept or a “bargain sale” concept in such things. It may turn off your high end customers. On the flip side, if your “mainstream” color catalogs look too elegant and sophisticated your normal customers might think that your products are too expensive and leave the catalogs alone. Do you see the effect? So always try to match your design concept so that this does not happen.

Amateur design
Next, we have the catalogs that seem amateurish. This mistake is usually made by people thinking they can handle publishing or image editing software without training. Of course the new applications these days make it easy to create a design for a color catalog. However, will the end product look professional enough? Amateur looking catalogs will always look off and some people might even say it doesn’t look credible. Will you pick up a catalog that seems like it was made by a twelve year old? It is usually best to hire a professional layout designer or graphic artist to do your catalogs. It lends credibility and shows your customers that you are serious about presenting the best of your products.

Sparing Quality
Lastly, some people try to cut corners and cut the quality of their print catalogs. This is a mistake. Catalogs are the extension of your shop or business. If people see that part of your business look substandard then that is how they will judge your company overall. A flimsy catalog with black and white pictures will not garner you any respect, and of course you sales would not be as good as well.

So those are the things you should watch out for when you start you catalog printing. Learn from these mistakes and you should be on the safe side when you churn out your own color catalogs.

The Convenience Of Shopping For And Reading Books On Line

If you are a book lover then you will surely empathize with me when I say that shopping in book stores, especially the popular ones can be extremely harrowing. Gone are the days when readers had respect for Literature and handled books with precaution and ensuring that it remained spotless for years. An experience in a book store (and God save you if there is a book sale) is fraught with jostles, chaos and the experience of never being able to find the right book in the right section. The reverential Jane Austens may be found on the floor of the kids play section if not amidst Tom Sharp medley of slapstick humor.

To add to it all bookstores have created special areas where prospective customers can review a book and then decide to purchase it. Started as a thoughtful concept, this reading section is a nightmare. Replete with kids, this area hardly gives you the impression of a place where one would like to take a few minutes to scan the latest bestseller. And the icing on the cake is the smudges and smears that these devils leave behind on the books that you consider precious. Though feeling the book lends a lot of substance to the final decision of buying, any book lover would resort to the less invasive method of buying books on the Internet. If you are looking for an older book or one that is not for sale or has been approved for re writing, then finding it on the Internet should be easy. The only small hassle that one may face while doing so, is the need to scan the search engine results to finally lay hands on what you started to find. But thankfully that can be done sitting calmly in the privacy of your home.

Books for Children

There has always been a lucrative market for books for children. Parents will know that the bedtime story is an opportunity for parent and child to bond. For some reason, human beings need stories and children particularly need that parallel world. Fairy stories, as well as being entertaining, also served to teach good moral values in the child. Then, books for children tended to split into stories for boys and stories for girls. This demarcation line is more blurred today. Boys have always tended to read adventure stories involving pirates, explorers, and soldiers. Girls were apt to read about ponies, finishing schools, and training to be a nurse. Occasionally in books for children, there would be a tomboy such as George in the Famous Five books. The past told of an idyllic world where children could safely play all day in the woods or on the river, unsupervised by interfering adults. In today’s books for children, the girls get stuck into dangerous situations as much as the boys. Take Hermione from the Harry Potter books, for instance.

The modern reader may think the classic books for children from yesteryear to be a little quaint, but that’s part of their charm. Reading them is similar to snuggling in front of an old black and white movie. It’s a comfort blanket. The world of Peter Pan and Wind In The Willows is reassuring. The Harry Potter books seem to appeal as much to boys and girls. Boys who had never expressed any interest in reading voluntarily now await the next Potter book impatiently. Some critics say there is no place for religion in the Potter world, and children should not be exposed to the dark arts of magic. Read any of the Potter books for children, and the child will learn about comradeship, loyalty and courage. Not bad values for any of us.