The direction is chosen after the tile arrives
A rectangle can run along a room or across it, and neither costs anything extra at the point of ordering.
Run along the length of a space the courses reinforce it and the room reads longer. Run across the width it reads wider and the cuts move to the side walls instead of the ends. A square offers no such decision, which is either a relief or a missed opportunity depending on the room.
Offset is the second decision
Once the direction is set, the courses either line up or they do not.
Stack bond gives continuous joints both ways and reads as a grid. A half offset gives the familiar running bond. A third offset steps the joints diagonally and is the usual choice on longer pieces, because a long tile is never perfectly flat along its length and a half offset puts the middle of one piece against the end of another.
12x24 is the size the catalog runs on
12x24 is the largest size group here by a very wide margin, then 24x48, 12x48, 3x24, 6x12, 16x24 and 4x12.
That one format carries more of this catalog than any other, and the reason is proportion rather than size: one to two is large enough to cut the joint count and small enough that a slightly uneven floor does not fight it. Everything else is a departure from it in one direction or the other.
What the collection excludes
Planks, vanity tops, backsplash pieces and swatches are all excluded from this range even though every one of them is rectangular.
That is the rule doing something sensible. A plank is a rectangle whose proportion is the point, a vanity top is furniture and a backsplash piece is cut to a cabinet. Grouping them by shape would put four unrelated products on one page. Square tile and mosaic is the other half of the shape question.
The proportion is the real variable
A 3x6 and a 12x48 are both rectangles and they have almost nothing in common. One runs one to two, the other one to four.
The further a proportion goes from one to two, the more the tile stops being a surface and starts being a line. A 3x24 or a 12x48 draws a direction across a room whether or not anyone intended it; a 12x24 mostly just covers ground. That is the axis worth thinking along rather than the overall size.
Thickness spans the whole catalog
The figures here run from thin glass at a fraction of an inch up to 20 mm paving and 1 1/4 inch stone, with 9 mm and 3/8 carrying the middle.
That is the consequence of grouping by shape rather than by use. A page holding interior tile, outdoor paving and mosaic sheets together will never have one thickness, and two products from it will not finish flush unless they were meant to.
Matte, because the range is mostly floor and paving
Matte is the leading face by some way, with glossy, polished, honed, tumbled and split face groups behind it.
It follows from what is in it. Moldings are the largest product type, then field tile, then mosaic and paving, and a great deal of the whole is 20 mm outdoor material. A collection weighted toward floors and terraces will be weighted toward matte.
The materials and the effects
Porcelain dominates, then marble, ceramic, travertine and glass, with limestone, travertine and marble looks leading the printed effects.
A shape-based collection ends up being a survey of the catalog, which is its use: it is a way of seeing what exists in one proportion across every material at once rather than a place to make a final choice. The effects list is the clearest sign of that breadth, since limestone, travertine, marble and slate looks all appear in quantity and each belongs to a different part of the business.
Where to go from here
The shape is a starting point rather than a conclusion, and the collections defined by material, room or format give sharper answers.
Porcelain tile, marble tile and floor tile are the three that cover most of what is here, and each of them can say something about the product that a shape never can.
