Treating information in designing printed technical catalogues

Abstract

Technical catalogues are a form of communication that has informational and commercial objectives. They are responsible for presenting clear, safe technical content and instructions to their users, parallelly to meeting the corporation’s interests in divulging products, brands or technologies. Using information design concepts and principles, in this article we will present criteria for the assessment of printed technical catalogue pages, considering the balance among three factors which, combined in different proportions, must qualify any design product: utility, satisfaction and reliability. We emphasize that the development of communications by technically prepared professionals, allied to resources coming from information design, can result in materials that are capable of blending the informative and ethical requirements of technical communications with the persuasive appeals of commercial communications.