A 2023 perspective into designing impactful Brochures & Product Catalogues for Manufacturing Companies.

What is a Brochure?

A Brochure is a marketing collateral with supportive info-graphics and text. A marketing collateral used as an advertising tool for a manufacturing company’s products or services. Brochures and Product Catalogues come in different sizes and shapes, there are different types of brochures available. Along with a digital presence of your business, Brochures & Product Catalogues stretches your Manufacturing brand’s visibility wide and far. Your Manufacturing Company Brochure or a Product Catalogue is the first brand collateral that people encounter, so you have to give the best “First Impression”. Remember, a Brochure or a Product Catalogue is the starting point of the sales funnel.

 

An Engineering Company Brochure

Example of a Manufacturing Company Catalogue Design

Why is Brochure Still Relevant?

A tangible, attractive, well-crafted and suave brochure or a catalogue cannot be replaced by any digital media. A Brochure or a Product Catalogue introduces your business to your potential customers. A neatly designed Brochure reflects on your business values and professionalism. A mediocre brochure design deteriorates your Brand Image.

Manufacturing Company Brochure Basics

Manufacturing companies need to have Brochures as well as the Product Catalogues. While Brochures are aimed at branding, Product catalogues are meant for advertising, marketing and sales. A Manufacturing Company’ s brochure portrays the Corporate Profile of the organization and the Product Catalogues brief about the individual products.

Manufacturing Brochure Designing Guidelines

• If you are focusing on engaging new customers your brochure should approach in a particular way to target new audience, attract them with offers, discounts and memberships mention it on the brochure.
• If you are introducing a new product of your brand, make an announcement on your brochure. Be informative about your new products. Add images and uses of that product, build excitement about the new product
• Manufacturing Companies having a perfectly designed catalogues is like having a salesperson. And a salesperson’s central purpose is to sell and to be completely informative about the company and products. Hence the Manufacturing Companies must have catalogues that should contain all the product information with images.
• Having a purpose is the first step towards designing the brochure and imposing the purpose on brochure creatively is a key.

Types of Brochures
In order to design a brochure is a crucial step to choose what type of brochure would be sufficient to showcase all the important information, supportive images that will represent your offerings. While a B2C company can choose fanciful shapes, sizes and colours to design. A B2B Manufacturing company on the other hand has to be professional and stick to the established standards without much experimenting. Nevertheless, following are the types of Brochures that you can think of.

By format

• Tri-fold
• Single gate fold
• Z-fold
• Parallel fold
• Roll fold
• Accordion fold
• Half + half fold
• Half-fold (letter)
• Half-fold
• Half + tri-fold
• Double gate fold
• Bi-Fold
• Handbill
• Direct Mail
• Response
• Check Out
• French fold

By Content

• Company profile brochure
• Sales brochure
• Product Catalogue
• Datasheet
• Event brochures
• Menus
• Forms
• Pamphlets
• Invitation for openings , inaugurations

Preferred Paper Material for a Brochure
No matter how great your design is but if it isn’t printed on suitable paper the whole execution could go wrong. A brochure is a substantial tool that represents your company, and to make that representation effective the tool you are handing over has to be on point. Choosing the right material for a brochure completely depends on what look you have imagined for your brochure and what texture your brochure needs to present the content it has.

Here are some tips to keep in mind to choose perfectly suitable paper for a brochure

Paper stock & card stock are the two most used paper types to print the brochures. Thickness: “GSM” (grams per square meter) is the measurement to measure thickness of the paper. Higher GSM indicates thickness. Higher thickness may give professional look to brochure but it’s not always suitable for all the type of brochure.

• 35-55 GSM – very thin GSM mostly used for newspaper brochure.
• 90 GSM – thickness that’s used for magazine
• 130-170 GSM – long lasting quality paper which is mostly used for posters
• 170-300 GSM- mostly being used for corporate brochures.
• 350-400 GSM – very thick and mostly used for business cards and brochures

Finish: After deciding the thickness of the paper, the next step to take is selecting the finish of the paper you want to print your brochure on.
Glossy: shiny look Good for brochure with lots of images Vibrant colours
Matte: this paper gives the raw look It is coated but not glossy Softer images

What is a well crafted brochure?
The most important thing to keep in our mind to draft a brochure is to understand the personality of your business. Knowing your company’s lifeblood will lead you to figure out your complete marketing actions and formulating a brochure is one of the crucial marketing actions. Why do you need to know your brand personality? Knowing your brand’s personality will let you know your company’s core value, morals and vision and it will lead you to find the perfect way to represent your product and service as well as target audience. Hence knowing your brand’s personality is an essential step.

Things to keep in mind while Designing Manufacturing Company Brochures

• Present your brand’s identity, incorporate your brand’s logo and slogan. Incorporating your brand’s logo using corporate colours will generate brand awareness.
• Choose reasonable design- size, colour, shape which are relevant to your business and represent its heart n soul.
• Make your CTA (call of action) that you want your readers to take BIG AND HIGHLIGHTED.
• Keep the content factual and detailed yet compact.
• Keep the format easy, neat and clean.
• Keep the content reader friendly ex. Language, font, font size, font colour, background colours, headlines, sub headlines.
• Keep the content informative, useful, make people retain your brochures. Ex, adding city maps, directions, safety notes, anything that is relevant to your product as well as useful or informative towards your target audience.
• Use high quality images only. Images being used should be supporting and communicative.
• Add uniqueness to your brochure, keep the design neat and clean.

Difference between brochure and catalogue? Why should Manufacturing Companies have catalogues?

However, brochures and catalogues are both representative of a firm, but with slight differences. The key difference between brochures and catalogues is, a brochure contains information about company and product, and a catalogue has detailed information about each product or service. Basically a brochure works as a representative and a catalogue is a complete salesman as well as a
representative. Both brochure and catalogue have different purposes. The content catalogue contains more depth about product and company. The reason why manufacturer companies should have catalogues is the same, “a catalogue is a complete salesman and a representative”. Every manufacturer company needs a catalogue which contains information in depth about the firm and products. The manufacturer company’s brochure / catalogue should concentrate on:

• Company’s identity, core values, mission or aim.
• Owners identity , a picture
• Corporate profile
• Infrastructure
• Capabilities
• Clientele
• Certifications /legal existence
• Recent Projects
• Detail product description
• Employee welfare
• Keynote
• Achievements
• Environmental awareness, contribution towards environment.

Having fulfilled above points will create a complete ideal catalogue to enhance your company’s engagement. Displaying the company’s legal existence, infrastructure, achievements and owner’s identity will build trust among the audience. Sharing company’s values, beliefs, mission or aim would lead to forming a bond with consumers. Detailed product description will attract the audience. Employee’s welfare and contribution towards the environment will set an example and build an image.

Keep Redesigning your Manufacturing Brochure / Catalogue

As there is no such rule or deadline to redesign your brochure but it’s important to have an understanding to know the right time or need to update or redesign the brochure. Whenever a company introduces a new product or is willing to engage new customers. The redesigning should take place to keep the company’s presence alive and updated. The designer should be aware of trends in markets to represent your company through brochures, like new graphic style, effects, and templates to keep the attention towards your company. Redesigning your brochure is basically maintenance of your company’s presence.

Size of the Manufacturing Company Brochure

The most common (standard) paper sizes for brochures:

• Letter size: 8.5” x 11” (or 21.59 x 27.94 cm)
• DIN A4: 8.3” x 11.7” (or 21.0 x 29.7 cm)
• Legal size: 8.5” x 14”
• Memo size: 5.5” x 8.5”
• Tabloid size: 11” x 17”
• 9” x 12”
• 11” x 25.5”
• It is fine to break the standard and customize your brochures/ Catalogues size: Specially Industrial Catalogues need to be bigger and bolder because they contain a lot of information in text format. And it is completely acceptable to go out of the box and customize your brochure’s size as your requirements

Manufacturing Company Brochure and Catalogue Designing DO’S

• Make your brochures attractive, take efforts to stand out in the market, never copy. People often judge a book by its cover.
• Put only relevant information.
• The designer needs to think about all the aspects about printing. For example, designers have to keep in mind that the standard brochure size is 8.5 x 11 inches.
• You can Experiment with printing styles like 3D effects, different texture, Foil stamping printing, for example, perfumed brands using Scent Printing Process. You could smell the perfume in a brochure.
• Add QR code to your brochure, to connect with your audience digitally in the fastest way.
• Use illustrations and images to convey the message.
• Design the brochure from the target audience’s perspective.
• Use RGB colours for digital brochures and CMYK for printings.

Manufacturing Company Brochure and Catalogue Designing Don’ts

• Remember less is more, do not add too much text into your brochure, and instead use illustrations and images to communicate, keep little white (blank) space.
• Don’t go for too basic templates; make sure you are grabbing the attention of your target consumer.
• Don’t forget to highlight your CTA (call to action) ; don’t merge your CTA somewhere middle in the text; make sure it is visible easily.
• Do not copy from your competitions.
• Don’t use images with watermarks on it , avoid blur or poor quality images or illustrations
• Do not complicate the reading flow.
• Knowing about how brochures work and its importance surely enhance your marketing strategies. A well crafted and correctly distributed brochure will increase engagement, brand value, build trust between a brand and consumer. That is how brochures are becoming the brand representative and not just an informative paper.