Business efficiency leads to business profitability, so whether you're new to graphic design or an experienced pro, you should always look for ways to make your business more efficient. Time is money, after all, and one way you can streamline your direct-mail catalog designs is to use a pre-fabbed catalog layout template from PsPrint. Because they have so many pages, catalogs can be tedious to design and are one of the more expensive printing products online. These templates eliminate the guesswork so you know your design is accurate.

Follow this guide for using catalog mailer templates to increase productivity in your graphic design business.

Catalog templates use a series of lines that not only set up the size and shape of the catalog, but also ensure the catalog will be printed quickly, efficiently and exactly as intended. Understanding the layout lines and following them accordingly means your clients' catalogs will come off the press looking great. They are:

• Bleed area – On catalog templates, this is the area outside the actual page dimensions in which colors and lines must be drawn through to ensure edge-to-edge printing. If your catalog includes a blue background, for example, you'll need to make sure that the blue color extends through the bleed area or you risk having a white border around your pages.
• Cutline – This line represents the actual page size, and where the finished print job will be cut. You can use the cutline to help gauge the distance from your catalog's edge to the graphic and text elements of the card, in conjunction with the safety line.
• Safety line – All the text and images that need to be included in the catalog mailer must be inside the safety line if you want to guarantee against anything being cut off. The great thing about the safety line is that you can rest assured that design elements within its borders will be included in the final printing.

Using catalog templates to streamline your graphic design business is a great idea, because every time you start a new catalog project you won't have to waste time setting up a new template or fret over whether the print job will turn out correctly. The last thing you want to do is spend money on a heavy direct-mail catalog marketing campaign, only to have to reprint it because you didn't lay the design out to the printer's specifications. It's better to be safe than sorry, and to save time and money. You can get free catalog mailer page layout templates from PsPrint.