Accordingly, design processes should be closely oriented on the automation options that are available. Otherwise, any iterations that are made without specific knowledge of automation will be for nothing. Ideally, automation experts are already involved in the design process or the design agency itself has the necessary technical expertise apart from its creative capacity: this is the case for LOFT by Laudert.
By analyzing the data basis and product information used for catalog creation, common factors and logical trends can be identified within the data. For this reason, print strategy is often a highly PIM-driven topic: during subsequent automated catalog creation, the data is managed in the database and flawed manual administration in the document becomes unnecessary.
Using path creation, which controls the automatic creation of products, future catalog pages are filled in with product data. The defined layout templates act as a foundation and determine the requirements for placing products, resulting in a systematic page structure.
If more product displays can be standardized, a smaller number of product templates will ultimately be required. This lowers expenses during the implementation phase as well as for subsequent maintenance.
Approaches using a variety of different templates are still conceivable, particularly if different product classifications make standardized display impossible. Once the templates are defined, the automation logic uses the product characteristics to determine which templates will be implemented on a given page.
