A catalogue promotes the offerings of its publisher, which may be a college presenting course descriptions, a gallery staging an exhibition or a vendor selling products. A catalogue essay provides an overview of the catalog's subject or some particular aspect of it. As author, your broadest goal is to encourage the reader to participate in the organization's passions and concerns. This requires knowledge of what you are promoting and appeal to your audience.
Instructions
1. Read previous issues of the catalogue to become familiar with what the organization offers and how it has promoted those offerings in the past. Your catalogue essay might not need to provide quite as detailed a description of the catalogue items as individual listings do, but you must be thoroughly acquainted with the content of the catalog and why it would be of interest to readers.
2. Know more about the publisher and its audience than is revealed by descriptions of its offerings. If necessary, interview principals at the organization to get a clearer idea of its history, goals and values. Read company histories and other relevant articles, trade magazines in the field and biographies of important figures. Visit online discussion groups and attend seminars or visit stores to get a feel for what is important to your audience. Aficionados of old radio parts and fans of Salvador Dali's paintings do not expect the same kind of discussion.
3. Adopt an appropriate style. Your essay may be dry and formal or loose and informal, depending on the nature of the organization and how it prefers to communicate with members or customers.
4. Determine the range, focus and space requirements of your catalogue essay. Column inches are expensive for print catalogues, and even publishers of entirely electronic catalogues will not allot space for your essay that is disproportionate to the rest of the contents. Typically, your catalogue essay will weave together the specific and the general. Perhaps you have four painters or three major kinds of digital TV to cover. These may be placed in a historical or technological context, touching on broader issues that would engage your audience. But be careful not to stray far from the specific subject at hand.
5. A catalogue essay is often intended only to engage or inform---to draw the reader into the catalogue. But if you are asked to notify readers of the date of an exhibition, where to fill out a form or which page to turn to for more information, do so at the very end of the piece or in a small sidebar.
6. Edit your work. Like any other piece of writing, a catalogue essay should be clear, grammatical, consistent in tone, logically organized and focused.
