Confused about Light and Dark

[ellysgifts]

I have looked at the example for the new scan book and am confused.

For example, take ZALR04. This is a white frame. The scan code on it near the top of page 59 has a "D", which mean "Dark" engraving. At the bottom of page 59, it shows ZALR04A and ZALR04B (which has an "L" and "D" respectively). If the frame only comes in white, why is there a "Light" engraving option?

Conversely, ZALR01 has a dark background with an "L". At the bottom of the page, it also has an "L" and "D" option. If the product only comes in a dark background, why is there a "Dark" option?

Hopefully, you can straighten me out.

Thanks,

[TimG]

The ZALR01 and ZALR04 are the same size with the same engravable area, but each requires different engraving settings. You can select either layout ("The Turners" or "Let the journey begin") to run on either product; e.g. you will be engraving onto a ZALR04. That product uses "D" layouts, so you can pick either the "The Turners" or the "Aubrey & Luke" layout to start from, just make sure to use the layout barcode with the "D" beside it. Going through the same steps if you want to engrave on a ZALR01 means checking the designation for that product ("L") and picking the corresponding layout barcodes (with "L").
I think your confusion is that you thought that the frame "only comes in white" or "only comes in a dark background" when in reality the frame really does come in both (they're the same size/shape with the same engravable area, so the layouts are interchangeable).
The same thing applies to the ZALR frames on the previous page; the ZALR23 takes dark engraving but the other three ZALR20, ZALR21 and ZALR28 take light engraving. For all four layouts shown below, just pick a layout and make sure to match the product you're actually going to engrave on to the appropriate layout, e.g. to engrave on a ZALR23 (designated "D" for dark engraving) pick any of the four layouts and just be sure to scan the "D" marked layout barcode. Or to engrave on a ZALR28 (designated "L" for light engraving) pick any of the four layouts shown and scan the "L" marked barcode.

For some products in the past we used to list the product color/finish beside the layout barcode, e.g. ZBOU10-13 (page 36 in January 2013) had each layout set up for "Blue" or "Tan, Cherry, Ivory". The same thing still exists, it's just that instead of saying "Tan, Cherry, Ivory" with a barcode, it just says "D" for dark engraving. The tan, cherry, and ivory products are marked with "D" to correspond with that.
So the obvious suggestion from here is, "Well, why not just stick with listing out the color options like that? It's less confusing." Try to do that for page 49 (catalog page 47). There are seventeen colors to do that for. We can just designate each product as either "D" or "L" and mark the barcode with just "D" or "L" to correspond to that, rather than list out seven product colors/finishes on one barcode and the other ten on the other (for all seventeen layouts, i.e. 34 barcodes). What a mess that would be! The "D" and "L" just makes way more sense for this page. To make the catalog consistent, though, we use the "D" and "L" throughout the catalog.

If you really want to walk through the difference, let's look at ZBOU10-13 one more time. In the past (with page 36 of January 2013) you would pick a particular item that is either blue, tan, cherry, or ivory. You would then look at the available layouts to pick from. There are two barcodes below each of those layouts. Say you want the "Always & Forever" layout, but we're going to put it on cherry. Looking directly below the layout, find the barcode that actually goes with the cherry (it says "Tan, Cherry, Ivory") and that's what you want. It's the file named ZBOU10B. Now, let's do the same thing in the new catalog. Page 56 (catalog page 54) has the ZBOU10-13 with virtually the exact same thing. The "Always & Forever" layout has two barcodes, but this time they're only marked with "D" and "L". Which one do we pick? We're actually engraving on a cherry, so look in the "Product Options" box beside the cherry. It marked with a "D". So that's the one. Note that the "D" barcode under "Always & Forever" is, again, ZBOU10B. We got to the same file both ways.

To walk through your ZALR01,04 example, go to page 43 in January 2013. There are a few more product options in here than the new catalog because ZALR07 and ZALR09 have been discontinued. Still, the same general idea applies. Pick a product, e.g. ZALR01 and note it's designation (it's a dark product because it's black, but really it's up to you to be certain about this; there is NO ambiguity with the new system - a product is either "D" or "L"). Pick any of the four layouts you like (e.g. "Aubrey & Luke") and scan the "Dark Product" barcode, ZALR04A. In the new catalog, it works the same way, the product designation just uses different terminology. Let's, again, pick ZALR01 but note this time the "L" beside it in the Product Options box. Reviewing the layout options let's, again, pick "Aubrey & Luke". Pick the barcode below it that has the "L" since that's what our product is. Note the file is, again, ZALR04A.
I know this is a rather long-winded explanation, but it's a pretty critical element to understand in order to use the new catalog, so I wanted to give you some comparisons and some walk-throughs to get a feel for it.

Tim G.

[ellysgifts]

Thanks Tim,

Much clearer now that I understand that the bottom of the page refers to the layout and the top refers to the product.

[Bill]

Thanks for explanation. I think this layout will be easier once we get use to it.