About the Project
The project consists of the update and redesign of a product catalogue that will be printed in 14 different languages. The company's products are a kind of bearing used for uncountable industrial applications of both light and heavy load. Some of the clients of this company are NASA, Rolls-Royce, some airlines... Anyway, It's really interesting. Here is the link of the company to know more about it: https://omnitrack.com/
Layout & Diagramming
The new catalogue has 32 pages which 8 of them are completely new (pneumatics units, Omniwheel series, ball tables/platforms and about the company). The content is really condensed and full of minimal details that I needed to carefully keep in the new design. The main challenge here was to let the pages a bit more clean and lighter without removing or changing the information.
I couldn't change texts because this catalogue is going to be printed in 14 different languages and the cost for translating everything again is really high. So I applied all the texts as it was in the previous version to avoid this extra production cost. Besides that, I was oriented to not add extra pages. It was a challenge to make everything fits with good legibility and without looking too condensed.
Cover
For the cover and back cover, I was oriented to keep the skaters' image, the main products and all the text. So basically I needed to keep the same information as the old one but trying to make it seem less polluted and more modern.
Technical Drawings
All the technical drawings were redesigned. Some of them needed to be corrected based on the real products and others were brand new products that I had to create the diagram. I created a new flat style avoiding strokes and gradients to let it clean and easy to understand. In total are 40 drawings which 6 or more are brand new.
Tables & Charts
I've created a new style for all the tables and charts. Here again, I was avoiding strokes and heavy lines and using light colours to help to guide the data reading. Lots of pieces of information in those tables were updated and I had to carefully check all them several times.
Icons
The old catalogue had lots of icons with no defined style and no pattern of colours. So I decided to redesign it as well. I adapted some free icons from the internet and others were really specific so I had to create based on the company products and their functionalities. There were made more than 40 icons for the entire project.
The new style is flat as the technical drawings and they are quite cute. I believe it can help to make the heavy block of information seem a bit more friendly and attractive besides being easier to understand.
Products Photos
For the new version of the catalogue, I've used lots of photos from the old one, but some new products were added and some brand new photos were required. So I photographed, edited and manipulated some using Adobe Photoshop. Besides that, I've created some animated GIFS using Adobe After Effects to show the movement of some products. The GIFS are going to be used later on the website.
In some cases, I was not at the company to photograph the products (I was sometimes working remotely from Brazil and the company is based in England). So other people photographed and sent it to me and usually the quality was not that good. So I edited to make them look better, cutting the background, correcting colours, and sometimes even changing elements in the photos. For instance, all the steel spheres were replaced in the photos to create a pattern between them.
Sometimes I needed to use a photo of a new product but we didn't have it in the company to photograph so I had to manipulate some images to create a preview of it to apply in the catalogue. As these supports for example:
Translation - My innovative solution
This catalogue is going to be produced in 14 different languages. It's such a big work! To avoid the copy and past massive work of more than 2.000 terms I suggested using the Data Merge function in Adobe In Design. Here is a fast demonstration of how it works:
To make it works I've created a spreadsheet in Excel and I contracted a person to apply all the terms from the old versions of the catalogue to this table. So I created something like the image below. For each term or text, I created a variable name (first row of the spreadsheet) that I applied in the layout. After that, I converted this spreadsheet into a CSV file which is a text file that separates the terms in the cells using a comma. Finally, I imported this file as the data source in Adobe Indesign using Data Merge. Now you just need to select the language you want and - BOOM! - the software changes automatically all the terms in the whole catalogue layout. Cool isn't it?
This process seems complex but - believe me - it saved hundreds of hours of work! Of course, I will have to manually adapt the size of the text boxes in my layout, because in some languages the words have more letters and they require more room. But anyway, now it's easier to add/edit terms and it will save time in the future when they want to create new materials like this one.
Now we are evaluating the possibility of doing a similar process to the website, creating a database with all the terms we have in the catalogue and in the website. But that's another story.
Additional Materials
Beyond the catalogue, I was asked to create the design for business card, letterhead, van plotting, cardboard box, warranty card, email footer (design & HTML code), entrance totem, and website (I'm going to create a separate project soon explaining this additional project).
Conclusion
It was a challenger project because I've never had contact with this kind of product before, so I had to learn everything from the beginning. They have a massive range of products and all of them are full of technical details that I had to learn. Besides that, it was my first work opportunity abroad, so the first time I got there I was struggling a little because of the different language, culture and everything. But in the end, everything went well, I got happy with the result of my work and my professional and personal development.
I am from Brazil and I had this amazing opportunity of working in 2 different countries. I've worked for 2 months in a stunning building in Stroud in England and for 1 month in Milan and Cesano Maderno in Italy. I've made lots of friends and travelled a lot around these 2 countries. I had the best experience ever and I will always take this learning for my further projects.
The catalogue is going to be published soon in the website of the company.
Thank you for checking my project :)
