How much does a catalogue weigh? A few hundred grams in weight, but much more, historically, in terms of a company’s image and communication effectiveness.
This year at Prodir we made the decision to discontinue our iconic print catalogue and close the books on one era of communication. Going forward, our freshly launched mobile-first digital platform will sustainably communicate everything our resellers and customers need to know about our writing instruments. And we believe that by saving on the physical weight of the catalogue, we’ll be able to load up our digital platform with so much more.
But we know it’s not always easy to let go of the things you love, and as we turn the page on our communication, we wanted to take one last stroll through our print past to see some of the highlights from our last 20 years.
Pure words
Sometimes the concept is best expressed in words alone. For Be Pure, the concept for the 2013 catalogue was stripped down to bare essentials. Introduced by a mini-manifesto of sorts, it consists of eight simple commandments, including avoid routines, ask questions and finally, be pure. The texts were written for the first time in a cleaner, sans serif font, black type on a pure white background. The pens were featured further on, of course, but with a pair of simple no-nonsense images for each style. The purity of this concept even won 2013’s Red Dot award for Brand & Communication Design.
Haptic communication
A Prodir pen is more than a writing instrument, it’s a haptic communication tool. Making that tool easier to use has always been one of our goals, like when we first introduced index tabs in 2004, so your fingers could find just where to open. But that philosophy was applied most strikingly to the shape of our catalogues in the 2014 swatch book. This catalogue was a real working tool, modelled on a painter or designer’s index of colour variations, that customers can flip, twist, turn and compare.
Communication tools for people
In a world where people – and monkeys and even mosquitos – are genetically so similar, it’s amazing that we’re all still unique. This is true for people just as it is with companies, brands and products, and we believe that Prodir pens let companies express what’s unique about them. This belief was the big idea behind the many beautiful faces in our 2017: Be true to yourself. The catalogue came in a number of different possible covers, each with a beautifully unique person on the cover.
Turning the page
With the catalogue, styles changed, our experience grew, we took risks and experimented with photography and concepts, texts and fonts. We poured everything we know about design and communication into each edition – just as we’ve done with our new digital platform. Every edition weighed a lot in the hands and minds of our customers, and we hope that our new more sustainable website will continue to weigh just as much. Goodbye print catalogue! With the all-new Prodir.com live now, it’s time to turn the page.