In-house catalogue design?

[SLC]

Hi,

My company has recently been looking into launching a new catalogue for 2010. However the design quotes we are getting are, frankly, shocking. We are being quoted £6000-8000 for a 40 page catalogue with the bulk of the cost being 'design work'. However we have already produced all of the pages in our catalogue (albeit on MS Publisher) and the designers have quoted this price to 'spruce it up'.

Therefore I am considering doing our own design work and just having it printed by our usual printers. My business partner is quite handy with design work as he studied the first year of a degree in graphic design before transfering. Also my friend owns a large company which employs it's own design team who are willing to apply the finishing touches if required.

I was wondering what design software you would recommend and what computer I may need. I was looking to invest in a Mac mini anyway, would this be sufficient using Adobe InDesign?

Thanks and apologies for the long post!

[Calibre Designs]

Hi SLC,

If you've got the designs already in Publisher then I can guarantee that you are being over quoted for the project. This is believable though as big design agencies (usually with big overheads) will charge what they want.

Have you tried to contact smaller design companies? I run my company with a small design team but we get through a lot of work

If you are to do it yourself then I would go for a powerful computer. The differences with MACs and PCs nowadays are quite comparable unlike the old days. Get a big monitor (good to have wide screen) as this is handy to have.

We use InDesign for brochure layouts. Special design elements and effects are done in illustrator or photoshop then imported in.

Once done, you need to prepare all the pages to the guidelines of your printing company to prepare them print ready. Make sure you have accounted for bleed/crop/fold etc. Usual print rules CMYK and 300dpi applies.

If you would like us to quote then please do drop me an email : kay @ calibre-designs.co.uk

Print Portfolio here...

All the best!

[skeeter]

I was involved in a new 100 Page Catalogue at it was that price bracket. All the page templates had to be designed from scratch and the there was all the copy writing, photography, etc.

But it sounds like you are 80% of the way there.

Are you sure the supplier fully understand where you are up to?

That price is way above what it should be.

[Designer-J]

InDesign or quark are the industry standard as far as publishing goes. That's what all the Designer types will be using. And if your business partner is handy with Graphics he might be able to help like you said. The only thing is inDesign is a big investment. I'm not sure if quark is much cheaper. You should expect to pay around 700 pounds for the inDesign package alone. You might want to buy something more powerful to run the package too, rather than a mac mini.

[alexhughes]

I think the quote given is reasonable until you mentioned it's part completed. I would re-check and make 100% sure their aware of this.