Emparo's first printed gift catalogue reframes eighty of its best gift-worthy products as a keepsake, not a mailer. Built to sit on a kitchen table for weeks, it trades the online shop's grid logic for a calmer, book-like pace while staying unmistakably emparo: clean, bright and trustworthy. This edition also sets the template every future issue will follow.
Overview & Goals
- Make a catalogue people keep for weeks, not one they recycle after a glance
- Present around eighty gift products across six themed chapters with consistent, phone-order-friendly entries
- Establish a reusable template and chapter system for future seasonal issues
- Protect brand trust and legibility even where product photography is inconsistent
Budget & Timeline
Design and template build run through the coming weeks, with all eighty product entries laid out and chapter openers finalised ahead of a hard print deadline of 20 October. From there the catalogue goes straight to press and into letterboxes in the first week of November, giving no room for slippage on the file handoff.
Publication & print
- Format & extent
- A5 portrait, 48 pages plus cover. Slightly smaller than the usual retail catalogue on purpose, it should feel like a book rather than a mailing.
- Binding
- Saddle-stitched
- Content
- Images ready, text missing
- Print run & paper
- 25,000 copies, uncoated 120gsm inside, 250gsm cover. Uncoated is deliberate even though it costs us some colour punch.
- One-off or series
- Template for future issues
- Items to lay out
- About eighty products in six themed chapters: kitchen and table, home comfort, kids, outdoor, wellbeing, and under thirty francs. Each entry needs image, name, one line of copy, price and an article number.
Target Audience
The catalogue speaks to emparo's most valuable existing customers and to people meeting the brand in person at markets, both groups who already trust emparo and are being invited to browse for gifts rather than to transact online.
Style
Colour
Measured on the material you sent
References & Moodboard
1 source captured. Click any of them to see it full size.
In the client's own words
For the first time we want a printed gift catalogue, mailed to our best customers in early November and handed out at the two markets we attend. Around eighty products across the categories that actually work as gifts, priced from twenty francs to about three hundred. The point is not to reprint the shop on paper. It should be something people leave on the kitchen table for three weeks. Product photography comes from suppliers and varies enormously, which is the hardest part of this job.
Scope & Deliverables
- Cover design, front and back
- Six chapter opener spreads built around commissioned photography
- Product entry template covering roughly eighty items, image, name, one line of copy, price and article number
- Grid and pagination system across the six themed chapters
- Print ready files prepared for uncoated stock
- Reusable template documentation for future catalogue issues
Do's & Don'ts
Do
- Design the product entry so it still looks right with a mediocre supplier packshot, since about half of them are
- Keep the article number clearly findable on every entry, people order by phone from this
- Set prices in a typeface with tabular figures so columns of prices align cleanly
- Reserve the six chapter openers as the one place for commissioned photography, spend that budget deliberately
Don't
- Do not fill pages with lifestyle photography emparo does not own
- Do not simply reprint the online shop's layout on paper
- Do not let uncoated stock's softer colour punch push the design into looking flat or cheap
- Do not design entries so tightly to one packshot style that weaker images break the grid