2019 MTC product brochure

Back cover of the 2019 MTC Equipment Catalogue

Energise image-heavy product catalogue brochures by design

MTC EQUIPMENT, GREYWACKE RD, CHRISTCHURCH

This format, a 12 page booklet with a strong cover and use of solid colour throughout, is inviting, and looks consistent from page to page. By clear-cutting the product photos up to 8 products are laid out on a page using an orderly grid. To show and tell who MTC Equipment are and what they want to say on their website there are few better tools for this than photographs, but photographs have inherent limitations which a designer must overcome.

Set a stage

Establish a focal point

As with the layout of MTC Equipment’s image-heavy e-commerce website when designing image-heavy brochures the way to captivate your audience is by using the techniques of diversity, rhythm and zoom.

Layout on a grid helps create the look

I made some layout conventions, including typography, for product category headlines, sub-heads and text placement describing each product for the 2016 launch catalogue. I carried these over, with further refinements, in the 2019 catalogue as this is the second in a series of brochures. From one end of the design process to the other client review and dialogue about each layout was key to improving the page design as a user-friendly stage for the trailers to shine.

SDC Freight Trailers, Skeletals and Combiliner double-page spread.

The design conventions mean each page is laid out carefully to include diverse and difficult material, product names and intros, pictures of various sizes, captions, a contents page and so forth.

Feedback from customers on the 2016 catalogue was that the brochure be more pictorial, less wordy, more disciplined, this no-nonsense specification applied to the writing style enabled polished visual results, words and layouts interact freely.

MTC introduction page and the table of contents double page spread.

Variations on the grid, strong typography and deliberate use of white space makes for efficient layouts and no need for decoration

The grid is a rigid foundation but it is by no means inflexible or static, with planning and discipline variations on the grid were carefully built. The strong product category typography of large all-capitals creates a stage that allows the reader’s eye to settle on the heading. The “stage” remains constant from page to page, variations in typeface and type treatments from headlines to image captions and body copy let the reader know the information is different.

Removing distracting backgrounds from photos is essential to keep composite page spreads with six or more images per layout as engaging and focussed on each subject as possible. Key is simplicity: one focal point per image leaving the reader nothing to see except the thing they came to see.

The names MTC, Chieftain and SDC repeat throughout with disciplined graphic treatments that are effective at underlining their authority and making them look important.

Colour

This brochure included the proud announcement that MTC, as well as being Chieftain Trailers’ New Zealand agent since 2014, they are now able to offer bespoke trailers from the UK’s leading trailer manufacturer freight trailer types and models SDC trailers. These two high quality product ranges from Europe and the MTC brand are all distinguished from each other instantly in the brochure by the strong use of solid colour.

A layout of solid colour blocks in three tints of Chieftain blue clicks together effortlessly and provides the reader focus on the subject. Solid colour panels repeat throughout the catalogue, it is an arbitrary device used sometimes to divide one kind of information from another, other times for decoration. The division of information is clarified further by using typefaces that are different.

The design challenge was to meet MTC, SDC and Chieftain’s expectations of their brands being distinguished from each other beautifully in a product catalogue that looks terrific and customers find useful.

More work for MTC Equipment

Credits

Client: MTC Equipment
Design, art direction, copywriting, desktop publishing: MagentaDot Brands.
Photography: Client, MagentaDot Brands