Pigeonholed as Print
Key Challenges
• Representing available wetsuit colorways (which are unusually complicated combinations of black and day-glo details to assist underwater visibility) and styles in an easy to comprehend & quick to navigate catalogue.
• No budget for new product photography, and only low-res (and shot with a 1999 Canon Power Shot) product images to work with.
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• 2 weeks to design a cover and 6 spreads.
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• Create a memorable but not "whack 'em!" brand impression in a market saturated with beautiful catalog after beautiful catalog... because all catalogues filled with underwater expedition photography are going to look beautiful to the former Navy Seal who does the purchasing for a dive shop.
The O'Neill brand DNA is it's reputation as a manufacturer of superior product with the best available design & built-in suit technologies, so an understated approach akin to Nike was at the ideal end of the 'on-brand' scale.
Results
Sales-reps communicated back to the design team that they felt very proud to be representing O'Neill with catalogues that were both market-appropriate, and unusually elegant for the Dive industry's status-quo.
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Customer service & sales-reps both commented that the catalogue was also much easier to navigate than prior catalogues- and that the orderlyness of the "sale" page was speculated to have helped move clearance product quicker than the prior catalogues', more cluttery sale pagse (which also had fewer products on them).