Every so often, a client asks for a job to include what is known as “throw outs”. These are pages that fold out away from the foredge of a publication to create a spread that is wider than the rest of the job, and may themselves fold again to form multiple leaves. These can be very useful in highlighting a particular image, such as a map, or a wide format picture that cannot easily be accommodated in the format of the rest of the job, for example, but they do require a bit of thought at the planning stage.

Whether a job is saddle stitched or perfect bound, it will usually go through a three-knife trimmer after the staples or glue are applied. This cuts the job flush at both head, foot and foredge. When a throw out is included it is usually necessary to ensure that the folded edge falls short of the intended trim for the rest of the job, or there would be a risk of cutting through the fold, leaving a loose sheet of paper.

Similarly, it is also necessary to ensure that the edge of the page that folds back towards the spine also falls short of the spine edge (particularly with perfect bound jobs), or there is a risk that it could be stapled or glued into the spine, leaving the spread completely inaccessible. On perfect bound jobs we would recommend that the edge of this page is planned to fall about 10mm from the spine, since even if the page edge stops short of the spine, it can risk being difficult to recognise as a separate page if it is too close, causing the reader to turn over the folded leaf as if it is a regular page.

As above, the page (or pages) that fold back towards the spine need to be smaller than the rest of the job, but in order to avoid the three knife trim, the page which abuts the fold out page also needs to be smaller (page b in diagram). And what applies to one side of the piece of paper naturally also applies to the other, so the pages that make up the back of the spread need to be sized to run from smallest to largest, left to right.

This also means that when creating the artwork for a spread containing a throw out, the regular sized page on the other side of the spine – page (a) – needs to be included.

These considerations mean a bit of careful calculation is needed on the part of the designer or planner of the job.

But when all these factors are peoperly taken into account, it is possible to create stunning effects with the use of well planned throw out sections.

Moving swiftly into 2012, I am sure everyone is working hard keeping to their new years resolutions. On the business side of things I am sure plans have been made to attain new clients for business. Or perhaps a new startup is part of the plan for 2012.

Why not impress new clients with a branded marketing folder to organise all your marketing materials?

To make life easier for designers, I made folder templates for A4 documents, available to download. The templates are vector format in Adobe Illustrator and as a PDF. Both templates have one pocket and a business card slot for a business card of 85mm wide X 55mm high. If your business card is a different size, you can change it accordingly. Grab your folder templates for print here!

Printed A4 Folder .AI/.PDF Templates

Don’t have Adobe Illustrator or need a new marketing folder designed? Contact Printhouse Corporation to design your folder and of course Printhouse can look after the printing and finishing too!

We must have printed hundreds of jobs that are finished as “perfect bound” books. This means the text sections are folded, and “milled” (to produce a rough edge that glue will adhere to on the spine edge); then they are gathered one on top of the other, and a cover with a spine is wrapped around the text blocks, with glue injected into the spine to hold the text sections in place, before the whole thing is trimmed on three edges to produce a neatly finished book. (We usually recommend a slight variant of this process called “PUR binding”, which is the same process, but uses a stronger glue.)

In order to make the books as strong as possible, the binder creates what is known as a “hinge flap” on the front and back covers. This is created by placing a crease approximately 5mm from the edge of the spine. The glue that is injected into the spine also goes here, so that for this small area the cover glues down flat onto the first and last text pages. If you check any books produced in this way you will find that most have this feature.

However, this creates a problem in the supply of artwork that is almost never addressed in advance. This is, that if the intention is to have an image that reads over between the inside front cover and first text page (or the last text page and inside back cover), an allowance needs to be made for the image being lost in two places; both on the inside of the front cover and on the first text page.

Below is an example of what one of our clients wanted to act as a spread on the inside front cover and first text page of a book we produced for them.

If we hadn’t made the adjustments for the hinge flap allowance, we would have ended up with something like this.

To correct this problem, in fact you have to duplicate the image twice, and (in the case of the front cover) move the duplicated left hand side to the left, and duplicated right hand side to the right, to allow for the two areas being lost. So in the end what you print will look something like this.

But of course, when the duplicated areas are stuck to each other, what you will see will be the image going (seamlessly – we hope) across the join.

The same applies (in reverse) to the inside back covers.

The end of 2011 is upon us. As a busy time of the year a lot of us are already making plans for the next year, 2012. Either way we all need a calendar at some point. Printhouse Corporation is popular for producing calendars and hopefully this post will help you prepare, may it be a business’s corporate calendar or a personal calendar.

To make life easier for designers, I made an Adobe InDesign (CS3) template available for download. It is a basic calendar layout with British Bank Holidays. Use Adobe InDesign to change the colours, size, add images and/or anything to complete the calendar design. Grab your 2012 Calendar template for print here!

Calendar 2012 InDesign Template

Don’t have Adobe InDesign or need a calendar designed? Contact Printhouse Corporation to design your calendar and of course Printhouse can look after the printing and finishing too!

Concertina brochures have been a trend for while. If you have beautiful photography and after full visual impact, then this is the way to go.

Getting Technical

Sam Luck’s blog post, How to set up a 6pp DL leaflet for print is a great reference to two methods of setting up a DL brochure/leaflet. The one method is a thorough explanation of how to set up a concertina brochure/leaflet (also called a ‘z’ fold). The amount of pages/panels that can be used is limited to the size of the panels and the size of the paper used for print.

Showcase of Aftershock London 18 Page Concertina

I had the opportunity to work with Aftershock London on their Autumn/Winter 2011 Campaign. One of the items was an easy-to-hand-out A6 18 page concertina brochure.

The relatively small A6 size allowed for a full set of 18 pages/9 panels. Perfect for Printhouse’s B1 litho printer.

To add glamour to the bright, eye catching images, the whole brochure is gloss laminated.

Even though this brochure is pocket size, this is great solution to get the most impact to the products and show of excellent photography.

A prospective client is interested in your product or service, so they ask to see your printed brochure.  Question:  What size and shape do they expect it to be?

The answer will most likely be that they are imagining you’re about to hand or send them an A3 folded to A4 brochure. And how do I know this?  Through years of experience talking to print buyers about creating printed brochures.

It’s absolutely true! The majority of people will imagine the basic of all brochure formats.  And that’s a single piece of A3 paper folded in half like this:

An A3 folded to A4 brochure

Open flat and the A3 brochure dimensions will be precisely 420 x 297 mm. Fold your A3 brochure in half to make a 4 page A4 brochure and it will measure up to 210 x 296mm. It’s as simple as that.

Brochures can be a lot more interesting. If you just allow them to be designed first.

Let me be blunt, nowadays people expect printed marketing materials, like your corporate brochures, to be a bit more interesting. You need your business to stand out from the crowd. And fortunately help is at hand. A well designed brochure typically costs no more than a boring old A3 to A4 folded one. But it’s impact can be many times greater.

By altering the physical dimensions you can make your brochure stand out. By designing it carefully you can ensure that it really grabs the reader’s attention.

Why not print a 210 x 210mm squared brochure. It’s interesting. Different. And immediately demonstrates that your business is full of original thinking.

Or push the boat out further and die-cut your company brochure to produce an interesting shape that perhaps reflects something about your business. If you sell tools, then you could shape your brochure like a toolbox, for example.

The key is to allow a designer to be involved in the production of your next brochure. Rather than just reaching for the standard brochure template design, think about adding some panache.

Get your brochure design ideas from us.

At PrintHouse Corporation we’ve got literally thousands of brochure design suggestions. We welcome visitors to our brochure samples room where you’re welcome to come and browse around until you find the perfect brochure example.

But we also recognise that it might be easier for you to visit us online where you can also find printed brochure samples beautifully photographed and ready to view.

And just to get you inspired, check out our brochure sample video embedded right here:

Nice huh To make your next company brochure really stand out, get in contact with the PrintHouse Corporation Sales Team on 020 8963 0123 today.

What files should I supply to my printer?

We are often asked by our clients and designers how and in what format to supply files. In almost all cases, we usually ask for press ready PDF’s. There are many reasons for this. You may want to take a look at what a press ready PDF is first and also how to create one.

Adobe Acrobat PDF

When you are familiar with Adobe Acrobat press ready PDF’s, understand how they are made and what their purpose is, you will probably have answered this question already but it helps to highlight these points which may not be obvious if you haven’t worked with PDF’s before. In short, the main reasons why we ask for most final artwork to be supplied in PDF form are as follows:

• A correctly made PDF is all we need to print your job. This means you do not have to collect and send over pictures and fonts. One file covers all.
• This can sometimes mean that your file size may be smaller and so easier to supply to us.
• The PDF will have been made from your machine so all fonts and pictures should be correctly embedded. Sometimes when we open files, we have font conflicts and subtle differences can happen as a result. These then need to be picked up before print which takes time and extra care when checking proofs.
• We will not have platform issues on a PC or Mac as PDFs are cross platform.
• We have some great software that enables us to make minor tweaks to the PDF’s so they are still editable up to a point.
• It means we do not have to send you a PDF proof because you have already sent it to us!
• Cutting out the PDF proofing stage means that we are able to send you impositions quicker as there is much less repro time involved.
• So this means in theory, you should be able to get your job quicker!

There are lots of other reasons why PDF’s are our preferred format of choice but the above cover the main ones. Each printers will work differently but we have found that working in this way facilitates the most streamlined of workflows. Once you get to grips with working with PDF’s, you will realize their potential; working with one file recognized as an industry standard, in a clean and efficient way.

You may also be interested in our recommended PDF/X-1.a standard print settings that are available to download from our website here.

After all is done & dusted and your brochure (or any other creation) is printed and delivered, you may want to put it out there for everyone to admire.

One quick method is to reach for your mobile phone, do a quick snapshot and upload to Facebook. Sure thing, but let’s assume we want to do something nicer for the product we’ve put a lot of effort to bring into being.

With some basic to mid-level Photoshop  knowledge and understanding of light we can easily make a realistic looking image of a brochure spread.

Copying nature

After all, visualising something means it all boils down to the simple fact of recreating nature as best as we can. Let’s take a photo of a brochure spread and see how it looks. We can see the pages are slightly bent closer to the spine. We can also see how how the light falls on the pages — darker near the spine, lighter where the page bends and then slightly darker towards the edge. And, of course, there is a strong shadow at the bottom cast by the brochure. Let’s start up Photoshop and see what we can do with that information.

Snapshot of a spread

Shop a brochure spread in 10 steps

1. In Photoshop, start with Rectangle tool, choose Path from the tool’s options pane and draw a “page” in correct proportions.

2. Choose Gradient Fill from Layer/New Fill Layer. Set the gradient to 0 and check Dither.

3. Click to edit the gradient and add colour stops as follows: 0% location is 70B (HSB colour mode), 1% is 90B, 25% is 98B and 100% is 93B. Transparency stops are all 100% opacity. You can also try to move the mid-point between first and second colour stop to 10%.

Now we want to visually “bend” the top and bottom edge of the page so it looks like on the photograph.

4. With Convert Point Tool and Add Anchor Point Tool modify the path so it looks as per below. Repeat the same treatment for the opposite edge.

Let’s have a look at the shadow cast by the brochure. It’s almost solid but it’s actually more blurred where the page bends the most. As Photoshop doesn’t have (yet) any ”dynamic” shadow/blur tool, we will do it with a couple of additional steps.

5. Using Pen Tool, draw a shape along the outline of the shadow. Fill the shape with black colour and flatten it with a white background for it to create one layer.

For the local blur effect on the edge of the shadow we are going to use Lens Blur. It allows us to use the layer’s mask to blur parts of the image.

6. Add empty mask to the layer and using Gradient Tool add gradient in the are of the shape. The gradient should have three colour stops (0% 85B, 25% 0B, 100% 85B).

7. Shift-click the layer’s mask to hide it and fire up Lens Blur filter. By using layer mask for the source of Depth Map and modifying Radius slider, you can control how blurred (a part of) the shadow will be. Try something similar to the effect on the photograph. Hit OK and change the layer blending mode to Multiply and opacity to 50%.

Now it’s starting to look “real”, doesn’t it? We just need to add the other part of the spread and fill it with our design.

8. Duplicate both layers with the page and the shadow and flip them horizontally (Edit/Transform). Move them into place so they touch along the centre. Don’t forget to reverse gradient.

Voila! Our blank spread is now complete. Let’s add this fancy design of ours now, so it’s ready to be shared with friends and family.

9. Using File/Place locate first page of the spread. If you are placing a PDF, remember to use Crop Box option so the artwork is not imported with bleed. Resize the layer to the right size and use Multiply mode for it to blend in with our brochure below.

10. Finally, use Warp transformation (Edit/Transform) to slightly bend your artwork along the curves of the pages.

Congratulations! You did it!

Final image (click for larger)

If the above tutorial is too difficult for you, please contact PrintHouse and we will be more than happy to help you not only with printing but also showcasing your work, including professional studio photography.

Probably the most popular and perhaps average brochure is the A4 size. If it is practical I like to go for an alternative, which result to visually more exciting brochure and a happy client. In this blog post I will showcase two different design, but both with a blue theme.

Litho Printed Brochure with Spot UV

Hamilton Court FX is a commercial foreign exchange company. They required a corporate brochure that only had the need for 8 pages. Their corporate colours, light blue and black dominate the design with blue themed images. Keeping to a clean modern design an A4 would be to clumsy for a this brochure and 200mm square did not allow for enough white space. My final decision was to go for a finished size of 210mm wide X 240mm high.

The cover is matt laminated with spot UV on a section of the logo and text.

Spot UV is then also used on the images inside the brochure.

By printing litho, use of spot UV and choosing a different custom size , it made the brochure into something special and unique.

Digital Printed Brochure

Curzon & Company required a brochure that contains information about wines at a wine tasting evening. Since it was only for the guests of the evening, they only needed a small quantity. Because of the high set up cost of litho printing, printing these brochures digitally was more economical.

It is a 16 page, square brochure with a hard matt laminated cover.

In conclusion, this was printed examples in designed with a blue colour scheme, different finished sizes and printing processes. The options are endless…

If your print job requires extra finishing, such as a folder with a pocket, packaging or a die cut business card, you may be asked to supply the printer with a cutter guide. It is important that this is set up properly in order that the final job is cut and folded correctly.

There are a number of things to consider when designing your job if you will be using a die cut. For example, it will add to the amount of time the printers and finishers need to complete the job and it may be expensive depending on how complicated the design is. Therefore, it is always worth asking the printer first if they have a template available that can be used in which you can build your design around. This will mean you do not have to create the cutter guide saving you time, it will be correct from the printers point of view so no costly revisions or time lost at this stage and the finishers will already have the die made so may not charge you what it would cost for making a new one up.

This is an example of a standard 5mm capacity folder cutter guide.

If you require a bespoke design, there are a few things to be aware of when setting up your guide.

You can supply it as a separate PDF or incorporated into the actual design. Either way, it is best to make the edges of the cutter line a solid spot colour at 0.5pts and any folds as a dotted line also at 0.5pts and in the spot colour. It would be wise to rename the spot colour Cutter Guide.  In addition to this, you would need to make sure the guide overprints the artwork below so the artwork below is not knocked out when printing.

Your cutter guide will then be constructed using a Gerber machine. The solid lines denoting the cuts will be made from sharp metal and the dotted fold lines are converted into recessed blunt metal strips. This die is then punched into the print, giving you the final product ready to assemble, etc. The punching is usually done from the front as this gives a much cleaner edge. Therefore, it is best to always design your cutter when looking at the design from the front. Just makes it easier for the finisher.

At Printhouse, we have a library of templates for various cutter guides; some of which may already be made into die cuts and others that have been used previously that we know to be correct. Should you require any help with creating your cuttter guide, just contact us and we will be able to advise you. You may also want to check out our templates page here.