The single most common reason catalog projects run over time and over budget is not the design. It's the brief — or more precisely, the absence of one. Designers are exceptionally good at solving visual problems, but they can only solve the problems you've actually defined. A vague starting point produces an expensive guessing game.
A good brief doesn't need to be long. It needs to be specific. Here's exactly what to include — and what to leave out.
What a Design Brief Actually Is
A design brief is a document that tells your designer what you need, why you need it, and what success looks like. It's not a creative direction document — you don't need to know what the catalog should look like. That's the designer's job. What you do need to know is what the catalog needs to do, who it's for, and what content it needs to contain.
A brief that answers these questions clearly allows a designer to make informed decisions independently, reducing the number of approval rounds needed and the likelihood of revisions in the wrong direction. The brief is an investment in speed and accuracy, not a bureaucratic hurdle.
Brand Guidelines: The Foundation of Every Decision
Before any design work begins, your designer needs your brand guidelines — or at minimum, the core elements of your visual identity. This means:
- Your logo in vector format (AI, EPS, or SVG) at the highest quality available
- Your brand colour values — CMYK for print, HEX or RGB for digital
- Your brand typefaces, or the typefaces you use across your marketing materials
- Examples of existing brand materials that represent how you want to look (website, packaging, previous catalogs)
- Any brand guidelines document your business already has
If you don't have formal brand guidelines, send examples of materials you like the look of — and be explicit about what you like about them. "I like how this catalog uses clean white space and restrained colour" is useful context. "I want it to look premium" is not.
Product Data: What Format, What Fields
The most time-consuming part of any catalog project is populating product data. The cleaner and more complete your data submission, the faster the project runs. Your brief should specify exactly what data you're providing and in what format.
At minimum, for each product you should provide:
- Product name (as it should appear in the catalog)
- SKU or item code
- Short product description (2–3 sentences for full catalogs; not always required for price lists)
- Available variants: colours, sizes, materials, or configurations
- Wholesale price and/or retail price
- Minimum order quantity (if applicable)
- Product photography — referenced against the SKU so the designer knows which image belongs to which product
Submit product data in a spreadsheet, not a PDF or document. A spreadsheet can be referenced directly and imported into design software. A PDF requires manual re-entry, which introduces errors and adds time.
Define Your Audience Specifically
Who is going to be reading this catalog? The answer shapes almost every design decision. A catalog for independent boutique buyers looks different from one targeting large retail chains. A B2B wholesale document for distributors requires different information architecture than a consumer-facing product booklet.
In your brief, describe your reader in specific terms: what kind of business they run, how familiar they are with your brand, what information they need to make a purchasing decision, and how they will use the catalog (browsed at a trade show, emailed, downloaded from a website, mailed physically). The more precisely you can describe your reader, the more precisely the design can be tailored to serve them.
Format and Page Count
Your brief should specify the physical format of the catalog: the page size (A4, US Letter, square, landscape), the number of pages, and the intended binding method. If you don't know what page count you need, work through it with your designer — but come prepared with your total product count so that the calculation can be made efficiently.
A general rule: plan for approximately 4–6 products per page on a standard grid layout, or 1–2 products per page for premium or editorial formats. A 100-product range in a standard layout requires roughly 20–25 pages of product content, plus cover, introduction, category dividers, and ordering pages — typically 28–36 pages total.
Reference Catalogs You Admire
Showing a designer examples of catalogs you like is one of the most efficient ways to communicate design direction. Collect 3–5 examples — from competitors, complementary brands, or industries you find visually interesting — and annotate what specifically you like about each one.
"I like how this uses full-bleed photography" is useful. "I like everything about this" is not. The point is to identify specific visual choices — the use of white space, the typographic hierarchy, the way product specs are laid out, the colour palette — that you want to bring to your own catalog. Equally useful: examples of what you don't want, with specific notes on what to avoid.
Timeline and Revision Expectations
Include your target delivery date in the brief and note any hard deadlines (trade show date, season launch date, print deadline). This allows the designer to work backwards and flag immediately if the timeline is unrealistic for the scope.
Be realistic about your own availability for feedback. Revision rounds slow down when clients take a week to review each draft. If you know you have a busy period coming up, flag it in the brief and agree on a schedule in advance. Most catalog projects involve 2–3 structured revision rounds — brief this expectation upfront so neither party is surprised.
What Not to Include in a Brief
A brief is not the place for:
- Detailed creative direction about layout or colour choices — that's the designer's domain
- Requests to "just make it look premium" or "be creative" without substantive context
- Contradictory instructions ("keep it simple but also make it dynamic and impactful")
- Content that isn't finalised — don't brief a designer on product data that might change
- Vague timelines ("as soon as possible" is not a timeline)
The best briefs are direct, complete, and specific. They take an hour to write and save days of revision time. Every professional designer will work faster, more confidently, and more successfully from a strong brief than from a conversation — no matter how good the conversation was.
If you're unsure what you need or how to scope your project, get in touch — we walk every new client through a briefing process that covers all the bases before any design work begins.