Zaber Technologies Product Catalogue
A Communication Designer is a strategist who contributes insight, analysis, creative thinking and visual language to help clients achieve their goals. Our case studies demonstrate the value of good Communication Design and show how our clients experience benefits from the tools we’ve created with and for them.
In this case study we look at the development of the Zaber Technologies product catalogue.
The Problem
Zaber Technologies supplies motion control products to high tech industries for use in medical devices, pharmaceutical testing, research laboratories and numerous other applications. For years they marketed their products through their website and did not produce a printed product catalogue. After receiving repeated requests for a product catalogue from customers and distributors, they decided there truly was a need to offer a printed version of their catalogue.
As this was their first catalogue, they felt it was extremely important for the piece to reflect their company values and be in keeping with the brand awareness they had already achieved with their customers, signified by the red Zaber logo.
The primary message that Zaber wanted to convey was that they are a company with a high level of integrity that manufactures simple, easy-to-use products. They wanted the catalogue to communicate the fact that Zaber employees are experts in the field and have a straightforward, flexible and transparent approach to customer relations.
Furthermore, Zaber wanted to portray the company as calm, thoughtful and forward thinking.
The Solution
We designed a concept with a light, spacious and crisp tone that creates an impression of friendly utility.
The horizontal lines, strong fields of colour, generous white space, and muted colour palette convey a calm, reassuring strength to the audience, instilling confidence. The muted tones balance with the intense red of the logo, allowing the red logo to pop, but not over-power.
The 3-D line drawings of products float through the artwork, highlighting the aesthetic quality of these tools, literally proclaiming what this catalogue is for. The floating drawings add a playful levity to the design, cutting through the horizontal and vertical lines of the grid at a consistent diagonal, creating an active sense of movement.
This concept is calm, cool and serene — but with a hardworking ethic. It speaks of utility, reliability, friendliness and design savvy.
The Results
Zaber felt that the catalogue design was such an accurate visual representation of their brand that they decided to adopt it for other marketing collateral. Canister developed a one-sheet product summary and business card with the same brand visuals.
We asked Zaber how their audience received their new catalogue:
I have been meaning to contact you both because when I was in Germany for a trade-show, one of our newest (and largest) distributors spoke with me about our catalogue. He compared it to some of our competitors’ catalogues... demonstrating how our catalogue has the proper amount of detail with a good use of space. He showed me some other catalogues that were very cluttered, poorly designed (layout), too technical, and ugly. Overall, this distributor, and many of his colleagues, were very impressed with the Zaber catalogue. By the way, this distributor is probably the largest distributor of Photonics equipment in Europe (13 branches throughout, and headquartered in Germany), and the company is filled with people who do nothing but sales and marketing every day that they work, so when they are impressed with marketing material, I believe that it is meaningful. So, more kudos to you!
When we asked Bryan how he thought Canister’s work had benefited Zaber he responded:
Canister's work on our print literature has enabled us to present a cohesive and organized image to our customers, which is the result of the work that went into discussing the project before the actual design work began. Canister helped us to more clearly identify what our image is and to figure out how we wanted to portray it in our marketing material. The benefit to Zaber in having Canister help us to identify and articulate our image is that it has informed all the branding decisions we have made since then.
This case study demonstrates that Zaber clearly is still experiencing the benefits from the value of their investment in good Communication Design. Zaber uses these communication tools with their customers and distributors everyday and continue to gather great responses, increased brand awareness, and growth.
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