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This was a question asked to me by a company this morning, they were looking to create a ‘digital catalog’ opposed to a ‘digital magazine’. There can often be some confusion around the different terms used for digital publications so hopefully this blog post will help.

The term ‘Digital Magazine Software’ is often used to describe 3D Issue, however in reality the ‘magazine’ does not have to be a traditional magazine design, layout and purpose. The 3D Issue software can create digital editions from any PDF file, so this extends the use to all types of documents and publications a company may own.

Some digital publications often created using 3D Issue are:

- Newsletter (Customer or Company)
- Case Studies Collection
- Presentations
- Sales proposal documents
- Company or Product Brochures
- Training document
- Event guide
- Whitepaper
- eBook
- Marketing document
- Company annual report
- Report

and of course,
Catalogs

Online catalogs can be significantly enhanced from it’s printed version with the following features:

Quick jump links – Allow catalog readers to jump to ‘related’ products elsewhere in the catalog by creating hotspots

Shopping cart linking – Give your catalog readers the ability to click to the shopping cart on your website for a particular product

Product demos – By adding videos of product demonstrations, your audience can ‘see’ features in action rather than simply reading about them

Social buzz – If your product online catalog is a digital edition your readers can promote the publication and content by using the built in sharing features (Google+, Facebook, Twitter etc..)

Search – Catalogs can be fairly lengthy, printed copies can therefore be difficult to search and find a particular product or search term. With an online catalog comes the ability for the reader to type in a word or phrase, then have a direct link/click to that page.

Catalog Linking – The digital edition archive feature allows you to give your readers access to a graphical library of the other catalogs or publications, so you can promote your other products too!

We’ve put together a number of guides that can be accessed for free, here: