How can lookbooks support start-up businesses?
A self-promotional lookbook can offer numerous benefits for start-up businesses that are newly launched and looking for customers.
Despite their fashion foundations, lookbooks are now being used by other industries as a fast and effective way to showcase a brand and its products using striking images and minimal content. Here, personalised wallpaper supplier Precision Printing explains how to make your lookbook the most effective.
The essentials:
Maximise the effectiveness of your lookbook and keep costs down by first deciding on what you’ll include in it. The essential lookbook elements are:
- Cover page.
- Sensible navigation.
- High-quality images.
- Enticing product/service descriptions.
- Key brand details (including contact information and social media addresses).
Cover page
It’s the thing your readers will see first, so make sure it leaves the right impression about your brand. The objective of the front cover is to grab attention, which means you need to think: attractive image, excellent use of colour, and an appealing title to compel the reader to want to know more. Cover pages typically detail the month and year and, if it’s not in the title, you need to have your brand name and logo somewhere here, too.
Navigation
Carefully consider the order of the pages in your lookbook. You want to create a good experience for your potential customer when they’re reading your lookbook, and making sure it flows without interruption is essential.
To help readers find what they’re looking for, group related products together in the book. If you offer both goods and services, keep these separate, and try to section off connected articles into clear categories to deliver consistency and avoid making your lookbook appear disjointed.
Imagery
Visuals are key to the success of your lookbook. Make sure the photos you put into your lookbook are professionally-taken and of the highest quality, which means considering props, lighting, colour, setting, and image resolution for each shot. If this is one of your first print marketing campaigns, you don’t want any mistakes.
Utilising whitespace is a good move. Not every image needs to run border to border and whitespace is a modern photography technique used to create a focus point and highlight a particular part of the page — use it sparingly.
For a professional finish, enlist the help of a professional photographer to get the images just right. However, you can do these yourself if you prefer, but just remember to check that you have exclusive rights for everything you include if they aren’t all original images.
Product descriptions
While dominated by images, your lookbook will still need to feature copy. Essentially, a lookbook will feature product/service descriptions and — if you’re a start-up — perhaps a brief brand description so everyone knows what you’re about.
What to consider when writing copy for a lookbook? Quality lookbook copy must be:
- Concise: no unnecessary words or details.
- Informative: don’t leave your reader asking questions.
- Interesting: grab your audience’s attention and keep it.
- Enticing: make them want to give you their custom.
Try to create a relationship between you and your reader with your copy. Use professional language to convey your reliability, but try and adopt a chatty tone to come across as approachable. Try to avoid using very long words and sentences — these sound stuffy and clumsy — and keep your product descriptions between 30 and 60 words in length to avoid taking focus from your lookbook’s images.
Details
Place contact information towards the back of your lookbook, but don’t underestimate their importance. If you’re a new company on the scene, you’re going to have to shout about where new customers can get in touch with you. Make sure you include:
- Shop address.
- Phone number.
- Email address.
- Social media addresses.
Lookbook printing options and final preparations
Following the design stage, the next step is to print your lookbook. Have a chat to your printing specialist about the type of paper stock and finishes that might look good and ask to see a few samples to get a better idea. The worst scenario would be to put so much time, money and effort into designing the perfect lookbook, only to have it ruined by opting for a cheap paper or poor finish.
Double and triple-check your lookbook before it is printed. Proofread your copy, scan photos for anomalies and verify product names and prices. After its printed, get your lookbook out to as many potential customers as you can!