Graphic Design
Design For Print
Catalyst Group
Champion opening page and new garment showcase
Company Description
Catalyst Group is a subdivision of Catalyst Channel Marketing. Catalyst Group offers a variety of different garments and other items from various different brands such as Champion, Next Level, Columbia, PUMA, and their own clothing brand Timberlea. They also offer screen printing, embroidery, and heat transfer services for the garments they sell. Customers will usually place an order for a certain garment and want their logo or artwork printed or embroidered on the garment. Customers are usually from schools, sports clubs, and associations.
Objective
To contribute design work to add to Catalyst Group’s marketing campaign in informing customers about new and existing clothing brands, promotions, and services offered.
Catalogue
Every year Catalyst Group, a subdivision of Catalyst Channel Marketing releases a catalogue as part of their promotional marketing campaign in order to inform readers of new garments, bags, hats, and other items they have to offer from brands they are partnered with. The catalogue also gets updated with new information such as new colours available for certain garments, new clothing or items they offer, and new images to showcase these garments via a lifestyle shot or product shots.
I was tasked with creating this catalogue and putting a focus on the images as well as updating the catalogue and improving the layout that I created back in the 2018 catalogue.
My design process for this catalogue first consisted of researching other catalogues from various different companies in order to get ideas on how we could potentially improve the CG catalogue. I got to also look at the catalogues that Champion and Next Level had made since they ended up finishing theirs earlier in the year. One thing that was unique about this phase in the process for me unlike previous years doing this for Catalyst Group was that I now had the help of another designer who had recently started at the company. We both met up and brainstormed ideas on how to improve the layout of the catalogue. I also wrote down notes on what needed to be done and sketched out some possible layouts we can use. Columbia was one of Catalyst Group’s newest brands that they sold garments and watches for so I had to also research the company to get an idea of what their brand is, what their history is, and how I should layout their section in the catalogue.
After researching, brainstorming, and sketching concepts, I met with the managing director and my design co-worker in order to determine what ideas should be implemented and go over what we need to focus on first then distribute the work. We had originally wanted to do a slight layout change where descriptions were on one page while images were on the other but ended up having to change that after realizing that mobile users would find it a bit tedious having to go back and forth between two pages to look at an image of a garment then find the info on the next page. We stuck with the layout we had the previous year but made sure the product description was consistently displayed the same throughout the catalogue.
After planning out everything, I got to working on each page on InDesign while using Photoshop to edit any pictures I needed to. Any concerns or stuff that came up during the process I told the managing director about. We also had to assign some work to my co-worker throughout the creation of the catalogue in order to ensure we met the printing deadline. My co-worker created the covers, the table of contents (I had edited it a bit and updated it during the design process since we had to move some sections around), and he retouched some of the product shots that needed work or colour changes on garments.
In the end of creating the catalogue, the feedback from sales reps, supervisors, and customers were positive and sales continue to grow into the 2022 year. The company is still growing today and still increasing the products sold, the brands they partner with and sell items for, and they are also gaining more customers for screen printing and embroidery services.
Overall, I enjoy creating these catalogues and I feel it shows how I have grown as a designer since I had been making them since I graduated at Humber College from Media Communications in 2017. One of my accomplishments was my layout design for the catalogues since I felt it really benefitted Catalyst Group in a way where information is easily accessible and found.
Flyers
During my time at Catalyst Channel Marketing, I was tasked with creating flyers for Catalyst Group with the intention of promoting new sales programs such as the hoodie program or designs for neck labels that customers could use for garments. The objective was to inform the intended target audience about current sales or deals based on what the managing director wanted to promote.
In order to create an effective flyer to fulfill these objectives, I would research online to get some ideas on good designs and what is trending. I would also write down some ideas and notes on my sketchbook as well as sketch out some layouts to get a better visual idea of how the final product will look.
With the neck label flyer specifically, I had an idea where I would use the brand name to support the main message of the flyer. With that, I came up with “Build your brand to the Next Level”. I wanted to also highlight the “brand” aspect for the flyer since the neck tags would essentially have a customer’s company or school logo on the neck tags. I aimed to style and theme the overall flyer like a neck label since this was meant to be an ad for neck labels. The background being the garment and the layout being similar to a neck label layout.
The hoodie program was aimed at golf clubs while the neck label one was aimed at all of Catalyst Group’s customers and both have helped in gaining sales for the company. Creating these flyers is fun since it allows me to explore my creative side and come up with solutions to objectives given by my supervisor. I also like thinking of fun creative ways to advertise something such as the neck tags I helped advertise on the neck tag promotion flyer.
Trade Show Sign
Catalyst Group would usually go to trade shows in order to promote the company and gain new customers. The managing director wanted me to create a few banners and signs they could use in these shows to show off what Catalyst Group has to offer.
Creating these, my supervisor had specific objectives she wanted to fulfill. The trade show sign showcased here, she specifically wanted me to create a sign that showcased some lifestyle shots that would showcase what garments Catalyst Group has to offer and from which brands.
Using images we used from the catalogues, I created an asymmetrical gallery of images since some of them have different sizes so I had to make sure we were best using the space we had. I sketched out some layouts to see how I could potentially place these images.
In the end, the experience was a learning one since this was the first time I was working on printing projects meant to be printed on a bigger scale. I had to make sure images we picked were high enough quality that they wouldn’t come out blurry. I also had to work with the template from the company that prints these banners and signs so I would communicate with them to ensure that the sign I had created would work for them to print and not have any issues when it came to print.
