Think of your pattern book as a story book – the cover should engage the reader, and the contents should completely capture their imagination and leave them desperately awaiting the sequel. You’ve done the magical bit – you have designed your collection and you are ready to launch it, so how can you ensure your pattern book does justice to your collection?
Strong Brand Identity
When you are designing your pattern book livery, think about your brand identity in its strongest form. What colours reflect your brand? What textures? There is a huge selection of book coverings available – and even some that can be full-colour printed with your own designs. Ensure that your pattern book cover appeals to your customers and attracts new, relevant customers by reflecting your brand.
The Fine Details
Colours of block foil or screenprint, colours and textures of handle, hanging tags, fabric peep-squares… There are more than twelve different locations on a pattern book cover that can be used to enhance your brand message. Think about your ends, handles, front cover and spine. Are you using all of the available opportunities to show your brand and give a flavour of your collection? Are you helping your customer to see that this is your new collection? After all, this book is the sequel they have been waiting for. Pike Textiles can run a digital render of your proposed pattern book livery so that you can add to it, amend it and approve it before we begin your pattern book production. Pattern books are a notable investment, so ensure you get as much help as possible to maximise your returns.
Does size matter?
We can categorically confirm that yes, size does matter. Your pattern book needs to have many components in perfect balance. Your book needs to be the optimum size to display your designs. Yes, you can use flat shots of the pattern repeat and yes you can use inspirational roomset lithos, but your fabric or wallpaper needs to be allowed to tell its own story so ensure you have enough of the design visible to leave customers confident that there will be no surprises.
You need to balance pattern repeat with yield. What is the roll width of your design? Try and maximise all of your product by designing your book size to be divisible from the roll – we have an easy way of calculating this, so please get in touch with us at Pike Textiles if you are unsure of the best way forward.
There are many things to consider when producing your pattern books and with our 125 years of experience of book production, Pike Textiles can make it simple.
Please email caroline.adams@pike-textiles.com and I will be more than pleased to help.