Minga Fair Trade

Print Catalog

Photoshop, InDesign

Wholesale Catalog Design

Minga Fair Trade Imports is a wholesaler who works directly with artisans in four countries - Bangladesh, Ecuador, Perú and Sri Lanka. Each year, they produce an annual catalog of over 140 pages. For the past five years, I have lead the design of this publication.

Tenets of Catalog Design at Minga

When designing catalogs, I learned several key principles that helped improve the overall layout, readability, and consistency.

Revenue Per Page

This is a business. The catalog needs to bring in 3x its cost.
As an exercise, we like to think of this revenue vs cost balance at a page level.

Swatch Organization

Consistently positioning colors in product shots and swatches contributes to a more professional and cohesive design.
We arrange colors in the order of the spectrum (ROYGBIV).

Like With Like

Product is organized by categories, subcategories, materials, then prices.
This seems obvious, until one reaches a category with a pricing gap. A $2.00 pouch can't sit next to another at $40.00.
Tougher still is when a group of products belong together but they have a huge disparity in scale.
In these cases, we rearrange all products in the larger category to get a more even distribution or scale.

Visual Trumps Textual

This means, 'Show, Don't Tell.' But, it's more than just that.
If the buyer can see something that wrongly leads them to think a product includes some feature, even if it's not reasonable, the visual should be revised.
A textual reference is seldom sufficient.

User Research

Before I began at Minga, buyers revealed to the organization that catalogs were quickly put down due to visual overload. Products had lengthy paragraphs for descriptions, color was used rampantly, and many products were shoved on a page.
From customer feedback, designing for these principles was an immediate success. In years since, we've started improving our products and contracting out photography for even better results.

Add White Space

Areas of visual rest allow users to consume more of the catalog at a time.

Reduce Information

Catalog product descriptions have been reduced to only necessary information.

Improve Photography

More and better lifestyle and modeled photography has made the catalog more engaging.

Lo-Fi Diagrams

Lo-fi diagrams are a huge help in Minga's catalog process. They can include sketches, as shown, or even cut up pieces of previous catalogs attached to paper.

Selected Pages

Below are four spreads and an inside cover from our wholesale catalogs. Prices have been blurred to protect Minga, their buyers, and their artisan partners.

Scarves

Baskets

Photo Frames

Ponchos

Inside Cover

Let's Work Together

I’m a visual designer from Wisconsin. I have spent the last six years dialing up brands' reach and personality through clever but practical design.

Learn more about me here.

Portfolio 2024