Client: Cooper Lighting

Location: Peachtree City, GA

Task: The most recent publication of the 1,164-page Cooper Lighting Buyer's Guide catalog numbered 100,000 units, requiring 577,287 pounds of paper and 4,935 pounds of ink. Not only was this a costly endeavor, it also resulted in an enormous environmental impact associated with the consequences of the printing process, as well as packaging, shipping, handling and distribution of the catalogs. Perhaps worst of all, the paper catalogs were already out of date and contained incorrect product information before they even hit the presses. Cooper Lighting needed a better way to reach employees, lighting resellers, distributors, architects, and designers not only to promote their product line, but also to make sure the most current product information was available.

The Cooper Lighting Buyer's Guide Application is an enhanced, highly interactive version of the printed Buyer's Guide catalog. Users are no longer chained to a catalog the size of a phone book nor do they have to worry about having out-of-date product info or about missing product info for new brands or product lines. Replication of the CDs, including printing and packaging, represents an 80% savings per unit for Cooper Lighting. Against the printing costs for the catalog, the development costs for the Buyer's Guide Application are paid for in less than a year.

In addition to the front-end/client side of the application, there is a separate, companion back-end Editor application that enables database modifications to support the automatic update feature. It also allows the product database to be shared with other applications via standard XML import and export.

Features: The Buyer's Guide Application contains enhanced interactive features that a printed catalog simply cannot offer, such as:

• Users can perform targeted on-the-fly searches using keywords for selected product attributes.
• Users have the ability to save individual PDF pages for printing and e-mail.
• User configurable bookmarks can be applied to individual products.
• Customized annotations can be applied to individual products.
• User can create dynamic HTML project folders of saved product info including externally added content, such as PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets or even movie files.
• User initiated on-demand product updates insure access to the most current product information.
• Automatic product updates occur every 30 days without user intervention insuring that content is never more than 30 days old.
• Individual products or entire brands can be added or removed with the update system.

Echo Visualization won a Horizon Interactive Award in April 2005 for the Buyer's Guide.

Graphic Design
Interface Design
Content Design

Software:
Photoshop
Illustrator
Flash
Director