Catalog Printing: How to Choose the Right Format for Your Business

No matter what your business offers, sometimes it’s the bread and butter print marketing that makes the most impact. Enter: Product Catalogs. With a saddle stitch binding where the pages are laid together and stapled through the middle, it’s a classic that gives you a boost.

From seasonal assortments to evergreen products, these custom catalogs offer the space to show them all off with coated and uncoated paper stocks, plus text and cover weights that create a flawless feel. We love utilizing this type of product catalog for listing lots of product images with minimal descriptions.

For Nikki Castiglione, owner and designer of Lake Erie Design Co., getting her products in her customers’ hands was the primary goal. With her design and letterpress studio, Castiglione’s “customers and potential customers expect a printed catalog,” she said. “There’s something about flipping through a physical catalog that a PDF can’t replicate.”

As for distribution, Castiglione brought hers to a trade show and also mailed them to potential retail partners, increasing her brand recognition across the U.S. (Print Pro Tip: We can mail them for you, if you’d like: Direct Mail Saddle Stitch Booklets.)

“The best feedback I’ve received is that the printing in my catalogs accurately represents my cards and products,” she said. “I wanted a catalog that mirrored the quality of my line but didn’t overshadow it.”

Hint: Want to design with a product catalog template? As a customer-focused online printer, we’ve got them for you under Project Resources on the Catalogs product page.

Now if you’re looking for something that makes a sophisticated statement on a cash wrap, a coffee table or even a bookshelf, you want to do your catalog printing with Perfect Bound Booklets. With a seamless square spine and a cover and pages that line up exactly, there’s a reason why “perfect” is in the name.

We love a perfect binding for when you want a format that’s more formal and will last a long time. Think lookbooks your customers want to sit down with, not casually flip through. This type of custom book printing is ideal when you need 46 pages or more to tell your story and want to do it in a clean, professional way.

That was Jewel Butler’s print marketing strategy. As the general manager of Found Rentals, Butler wanted the brand’s catalogs to guide clients through every possible use case for her items, and ultimately, be displayed and used as conversion starters.

“To us, having something in hand – to touch, to turn through, to get lost in – is very high on our priority list,” she said. “When designing any marketing for our business, it’s important we stay true to our brand, [which] comes down to not only the design and content of our catalog, but also the paper.”

And speaking of, there are more than 10 paper stocks to choose from for your cover and interior pages, including recycled. Not to mention UV coatings and Soft Touch laminate to give your products the spotlight they deserve.

Hint: Wondering how thick your perfect bound catalog can be? (Up to two inches.) Or if you should enter sheets or pages when ordering? (It’s sheets, plus two for the cover). Smartpress is the online printing shop with the answers: Booklet Printing FAQ.

For a different feel altogether, Wire Coil Booklets and Spiral Coil Booklets make fantastic wholesale catalogs. And we mean a different feel literally, thanks to their metal or plastic coil bindings (wire bound = metal, spiral bound = plastic).

With both coil types, we love that these catalogs have pages that fully rotate and lay flat for easy viewing. That means comparing pricing and specs is a breeze, reviewing membership plans and charts is simple, and all those technical products and professional services? You can take in every last detail without pages flipping and flopping.

David McCord, president of Maui Vera, experienced that ease first-hand with his pricing booklet. After printing with a less-efficient format, McCord found the binding made a huge difference.

“I previously was ordering single double-sided prints, and when I saw the coil booklet as an option, it only made sense to upgrade,” he said. “I no longer had to staple my single prints together.”

He also got a lot more print options, like shrink wrapping, a must when you print now and use later.

An essential for trade shows and a B2B sales tool, coil bound booklets like McCord’s can feature pricing details alongside large branded imagery and product features.

“These booklets are my company’s first impressions for new and existing customers,” he said. “They gave me the high-end, high-quality, professional look I wanted to represent my brand.”

Hint: Did you know you can choose which edge your catalog binding is on? Yep, that’s part of our premium online printing services, too. Just use the Binding Edge dropdown on the Wire Coil Booklets or Spiral Coil Booklets product pages.

As you plan your campaigns and begin to think about marketing catalogs, you probably don’t think Brochures. But you should! We love custom brochures for intro-ing new products or providing a quick overview of your services. It’s catalog printing for the modern, on-the-go consumer.

With such a versatile format (and more than 10 folding options!), you can go as outside-the-box as you’d like with handouts, mailers or package inserts. We’ve even got the wafer seals to mail them and the variable data printing to personalize them for individual customers.

“The format we use to tell our story is as important as the story itself,” said Diana Stock, founder of Studio Stockhome. “The closed gate fold provided a unique opportunity to reveal our new collection in an intimate, sequenced fashion, with an end result that looked rich and luxe.”

Brochures allowed Stock to do a lot with a little, from providing key details to focusing her brand’s message and positioning it exactly where she wanted within the industry. Plus, the actual printing of the brochures made an unmistakable impact.

“Our candles are a deep matte black and we wanted to ensure the printing didn’t flatten the beautiful detail,” she said. “Smartpress was able to preserve [it] all and we were thrilled with the results.”

Hint: Before you design your brochure for online printing, check out our brochure folding ideas to find the right one.