Lead the Customer’s Eye with Smart Catalog Layouts

There is a certain kind of layout strategy for catalog printing that helps you lead customers' eyes to all the right places. It is all about manipulating the colors, lighting and pattern of your print catalogs to effectively and subtly lead people to the most important content. In this article, I will show you four simple ways to do this with your own catalog printing.
• The proper image pattern - When people read printed materials such as color catalogs, there is always a pattern. Usually people read from left to right in a "Z" type pattern as they go down the page. Most color catalog designers exploit this tendency and place great product images in these paths. As the initial "Z" path is established, designers then can lead people in the pattern that they want. As long as there are images and text headings along the way, you can change the path of people in any direction that you want. In most cases, designers lead them to the "call to action" section or the ordering details area of the catalog printing.
• Consistency and repetition - Another important factor that leads the eye of the customer is consistency and repetition. All of your color catalog product pages must follow a coherent theme and a regular pattern. If your readers see this pattern on most of your catalog pages, they should already know where the best products are always located and the information on where to order those products. The readers can basically be conditioned to expect where the important information is throughout the catalog, leading to a more efficient process of shopping and ordering through it. This is all done through the repetition of the layout and the consistency of the theme.
• Light and dark areas - Lighting is also a special technique used in printed design. By lighting up certain areas of a page and darkening up others with a special background, people's eyes are usually encouraged to go to the lighter side of the pages. This kind of subtle emphasis is a great tool if you want a certain product to be picked up above the rest. Usually designers put the flagship product in the lighter side so that people pay attention to it first. This is a simple but very effective technique that a lot of catalog layout artists use.
• Color themes and contrasts - Finally, we have the color themes and color contrasts. If you plan on printing a particularly colourful catalog print, then you should plan on color contrasts so that you can lead people's eyes to certain locations. The best example of this is the use of color wheel opposites in your catalog color theme. A blue background page with some certain areas of bright orange does well to contrast both color elements. Place a product image and description in that bright orange spot and you will lead eyes there. The same concept can be applied to other color contrasts or opposites such as red and green, black and white or purple and yellow.
Great! Hopefully you can use the tips above quite well in leading your customer's eyes to the right places in your color catalog printing. Good Luck!