Overview
A redesign of Superior Glove's main product catalog that turned into a complete overhaul of how we produced them. By bringing production in-house and developing a reusable design system, it became easier to create, update, and customize hundreds of product listings across multiple catalogs, line cards, and languages.
My Role
I led the catalog's visual redesign and developed a modular layout system, working closely with leadership, content specialists, and product experts.
Backstory
When I first joined Superior Glove, putting together a catalog was a fairly tedious process. The main catalog was outsourced, and smaller publications could take weeks to assemble. Product information was scattered across sell sheets, internal systems, and the website. Updates would be excruciating as we had to manually change things where ever they appeared. Like I said, tedious.
The goal was to bring production fully in-house, modernize the layouts, and, ideally, make the whole process a lot less painful for everyone involved.
Finding the Right Information
Before getting too far into the visuals, we needed to figure out what actually belonged in these catalogs. Who was using them? What information did they need? And how were we going to keep everything accurate?
Working with the Content team, Product Specialists, and Sales, we reviewed what was working and what could be simplified. A lot of inherited content was cut or reorganized, but the biggest challenge for me was figuring out how to present the products themselves.
Each glove had its own combination of specifications, features, and selling points. Some listings were packed with information, while others had so little that the layouts felt empty. With hundreds of products to accommodate, I needed a way to make everything feel consistent without forcing every product into exactly the same mould.
Designing the Building Blocks
The first big piece of the puzzle was redesigning what I called the product cell—the block of information dedicated to each glove.
Standard Product Cell
Expanded Product Cell
Hero Product
I developed three variations of the product cell: a standard listing, an expanded spotlight, and a full-page hero. Each offered a different amount of space for product information and attention while maintaining a consistent structure that was easy to work with.
With the product layouts sorted, I could have some fun with the rest of the catalog. Large-scale textures, close-up photography, and custom hero imagery helped break up the technical information and make the experience of flipping through a B2B product catalog a little more enjoyable.
Connecting the Pieces
Having a consistent layout was great, but it didn't solve one of my biggest frustrations: updating the same product information in multiple places.
My Team Lead introduced me to InDesign's data-merge capabilities and developed an initial template using product information exported from the website. This was a huge step forward, but I wanted to take it further.
Eventually, I figured out how to generate individual product cells as linked InDesign files that could be placed into any catalog. If a product's specifications changed, we could update that one file and have the changes carry through to every publication referencing it.
The same thinking applied to photography and icons, which were also linked assets. Over time, I expanded the system to accommodate different product-cell variations, larger content updates, and four languages: English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.
It took some experimenting (and plenty of time in InDesign), but we'd gone from manually maintaining hundreds of listings to having a much more manageable collection of reusable pieces.
8 of ~33 catalogs (Per Language; English, French, Spanish, Portuguese) produced annually
Sample Spreads
Intro
TOC / About the Hazard
Hero Product / Standard Listing
Family Page / Standard Listing
Family Page / Expanded Listing
Intergrated Promotion / Expanded Listing
Sizing Guides
Section Intro
Sub-section Dividers
Modular Layouts
Family Page / Standard Products
Standard Products + Spotlight / Hero Product Page
Some Afterthoughts
Looking back, the most satisfying part of this project wasn't any particular spread or piece of artwork (though I'm still pretty fond of the hero imagery). It was knowing that we'd built something other designers could pick up and use without having to start from scratch.
The catalogs looked better, certainly, but more importantly, they became easier to produce, update, and adapt. For a project that started with the simple goal of bringing production in-house, I think that's a pretty good outcome.
