All work04 / 11 · Catalogue
One template, three languages
A 16-page hardware catalogue built once and produced in English, German and French from one spreadsheet per language.
- Project
- Vembru wholesale catalogue
- Category
- Catalogues & lookbooks · 2026
- Extent
- 16 pp
- Specification
- A4 · 16 pp · EN / DE / FR · InDesign, spreadsheet-driven build · Self-initiated
The brief
What it had to do
I set myself the brief a wholesale brand faces every season: the same 24 products in three languages, with prices and specifications that must not drift between editions.
Retyping a catalogue three times is where the errors come from. So I built the layout once and let the data change.
Inside the InDesign file
How it is built
- One InDesign template: five parent pages, 34 paragraph styles, 10 object styles, 23 swatches
- One spreadsheet per language for product names, codes, dimensions, weights, pack sizes, prices and image links
- Each edition built from its spreadsheet, with a report that checks for overset text and missing links (0 and 0 in all three)
- Four colour-coded sections, with tabs on the fore-edge you can see on the closed book
- An eight-column technical table and the European price format for each language: €18.40 in English, 18,40 € in German and French
“German headers run long: Nettogewicht, Stück/Packung, Lieferzeit. I set the table heads on two lines, so all three editions keep the same column widths, row height and page depth.”
What this shows
Next season's update is a new spreadsheet and a rebuild, not a re-layout. Every edition has the same page count and the same page breaks.
Vembru is a fictional brand. Spreads shown from the English edition.