Tag Archives: Booklet Printing

PERFECT BOUND BOOKLET PRINTING

What is perfect bound booklet printing?

Perfect binding is a bindery choice commonly used for multiple page soft cover printed booklets and printed catalogs. “Perfect bound booklet printing” simply describes a soft cover publication that requires the professional look of a magazine with a wraparound cover that is hot glued to the interior sheets. It’s the preferred choice for booklets with as few as 4 sheets or more. Perfect binding is a great looking bindery choice for product catalogs, magazines, comic books, instruction manuals, look books, and a whole lot more. Lastly, our short run digital perfect binding equipment can provide you with perfect bound book printing, up to 2” thick, in as little as 3 work days.

The Process of Perfect Binding a Booklet

How is a perfect bound booklet made? A booklet has 2 components, the cover and the interior sheets. To begin, the cover is scored and then folded twice creating a continuous square spine which the interior pages are hot glued into. Relief scores, also known as hinge scores, are added to provide an exact area for the cover to open up on. The hinge scores add to the overall clean and professional look of the binding. The machine that does the actual binding will grind a groove into the binding edge of the interior pages to allow the hot glue to adhere better. Then the cover is wrapped around the hot glue and the appropriate pressure and binding time is set for the thickness of the catalog. After allowing the glue to cure for several hours, we 3 side trim the booklet to its final desired size.

The hot glue we use is either PUR for our larger runs or EVA for the short run or small page count jobs. In our opinion, both glues perform equally well for most of the standard house stocks we carry. When the job calls for just a few sheets or a small quantity of 500 books or less, we use the EVA glue on our smaller perfect binder, Otherwise, we use the PUR on our high volume production perfect binder.

I will explain other binding choices in more detail in another blog. For now, you can go to our bindery page to review other options by clicking here.

How to Determine Your Page Counts

Perfect bound page layout sample for booklet printing from SLB Printing in Los Angeles

Page Layout for Perfect Bound Booklet Printing

It’s very important to understand how to accurately describe the page count for your booklet. Using the terms “Sheets” or “Pages” can get confusing so let’s try simplifying this. A sheet of paper has 2 sides. For calculating pages in a perfect bound booklet, each side is a “page” so 1 single sheet is really 2 pages. However, if you require printing on only 1 side of the sheet, you would need to describe the page count as such.

So, for a 42 page booklet, you either have a 21 sheet booklet printed 2 sides making up 42 pages or you have a 42 sheet single sided booklet. If you forget to accurately describe the booklet using one of these phrases, your estimate and spine width will probably not be accurate! This leads us to the next topic.

How to Determine the Spine Width

As you now know, the cover for a perfect bound booklet is one continuous sheet that gets wrapped around the interior pages. Therefore the spine width needs to be determined before the final cover layout is completed. There are really only two main factors to consider, number of sheets and the thickness of the sheet. If the interior has 42 sheets and is printed on 50# offset paper, it will be thinner than using 100# gloss or 80# uncoated text. SLB Printing can help you determine the spine width after the choice has been made for sheet count and paper type. We always advise the need and importance for an accurate spine width measurement to help insure the final product comes out as expected.

Landscape, Square or Portrait size perfect bound booklets

Perfect bound digital booklet printing comes in all shapes and sizes. SLB Printing has the equipment to provide you with several unique types of perfect bound books. Let’s start with landscape size, we can print a cover that can accommodate a landscape booklet up to 12” tall by 13”wide and it can be as thin as 1/8” or as thick as 2”. Square booklets as small as 6” and standard portrait booklets are all within the manufacturing ability of SLB Printing as well. The best thing about being able to print digitally is the ability to provide you with short run quantities for your booklet printing needs. So if you just need a short run quantity of 5 or 10 booklets, that’s easy for SLB Printing.

Dark Cover Stocks printed with White Ink and more!

We have a number of house stocks for the interiors that include uncoated, matte and gloss finishes. But what really is unique is our ability to take a dark stock like a deep red, kraft or even black colored cover stock and print on it with white ink. Very few printing companies have this ability and it’s something that needs to be seen to be appreciated. Come into the store and ask to see samples of our white ink printing and perfect binding booklets.

Perfect Bound Digital Booklet Printing

SLB Printing provides the speed and look you need for your short run perfect bound booklet printing with our full line of digital, 4 color presses and our 4 color + white ink press. Call the professionals at SLB Printing for your short run booklets as well as your bulk order long runs of 1,000 or more. Let us show you what great customer service combined with quality digital printing really look and feel like.

LookBooks for Film, Fashion, Home and Cosmetics

Lookbook Printing for the Fashion, Cosmetics, Film and Home Decor

SLB Printing has produced LookBooks for a variety of industries including film, fashion, home furnishings and cosmetics. A lookbook is an assemblage of pictures, organized to either display products or provide a visual story. Different industries will collect and display their photographs based on their own unique needs. While the fashion designer is showing their buyers the latest offerings, the film maker is creating something more like a storyboard to convey their vision to be used as a reference. The home furnishings user is creating an atmosphere for living space. While the music and talent industry even use lookbooks to build interest in touring ideas for numerous singers, comedians and bands.

Lookbooks Have Plenty of Size Options

What’s really great is that there are no limits to how these lookbooks can be designed. Some of our clients have come to love the 11” x 17” landscape layout for their lookbook dimensions. We bind with Wire-O so these massive books lay flat when opened to the full 34” wide viewing area. It’s also possible to go even larger to 13″ x 19″ with the right art file. Imagine your product or ideas spread across 2 pages that total 38″ wide. There are tons of other sizes and several binding options including perfect bind, coil and saddle stitching. We’d love to post some pictures of our work, but we can’t for privacy reasons. But, you can always come into the store and see samples of work we’ve done for people named Drew, Joan and Ellen. Once you see the lookbooks we’ve done and who they’re for, you’ll know why we can’t share those images here!

Fashion Season Means it’s Time for The Best Fashion Lookbooks

Once the design for your lookbook is complete and you have your press-ready pdf files, we can take it from there. Now is the time to get those projects into our hands before the fashion season and spring events go into full swing. Short run lookbooks can be ready in as little as 1 or 2 workdays. But special requests may take longer. So do not delay and start planning that lookbook project today.

For more information on this product, please check out our products web pages for booklets, catalogs, brochures and lookbooks.

Printing Comic Books with SLB Printing

I wanted to share a story about how SLB Printing began printing Comic Books. Sometime last year, a young man comes into the shop with his Mother and starts asking whether we can print his Comic Book. He had his artwork saved onto a jump drive in PDF format (he had already taken the time to read our FAQ regarding file preparation and was well prepared) and once our prepress department opened the files up, they confirmed the job was perfect and ready to print. We went over the various paper options, showing him what the paper looked and felt like. He chooses our 100# gloss text paper for the cover and 80# gloss text paper for the interior. Saddle stitching was his binding of choice since all great Comic Books are bound this way. Pricing was discussed for several different quantities as well as the cost for 1 printed proof. Decisions were finalized and we were off turning his creative project that previously only existed on his computer and in his mind into an actual Printed Comic Book. It was so rewarding to see his eyes light up with excitement the next day when the proof was put into his hands. It was now REAL since he was looking at an actual printed comic book that he created! It’s times like these that I really enjoy jobs like printing comic books.

Since that first comic book job, many talented Comic Book writers and illustrators have walked into our shop. Printing Comic Books is very similar to any other type of booklet job we do. The most noticeable difference is the size is usually a little smaller but doesn’t always have to be. Also, the paper used is a little thinner for both the interior sheets and the cover, but it doesn’t have to be either. We can accept requests for Printing Comic Books on any of the text weight paper and cover stock combinations we have in the store, even newsprint.

Since Gotham Press on Fairfax went out of business in 2015, SLB Printing has helped many of our clients with Printing Comic Books too. Short runs of 5, 10 or 50 can usually be completed in as little as 24 hours. We print miracles after all, as our tagline says. Give us a call at 310-558-4752 or drop by the shop and ask to see printed samples of our work.

Perfect Binding: Creating The Perfect Booklet

If you’re in the business of marketing and branding products and services, then you’ve probably had to have booklets made at one time or another. If that’s the case, you should know that not all booklets are made the same. We’ll be glad to talk you through and explain the differences between perfect binding and saddle stitching. It’s our goal to help you create the perfect booklet for your needs.

You might ask us, “First of all, why would I need a booklet made?”

That’s a valid question. At SLB Printing, as well as in the rest of the printing and bindery industry, we use “booklets” as a term for a small bound book. The book is typically made with a paper cover. So if your business gives out catalogs and pitch books, or if you’re a magazine publisher, then you’ll definitely want a booklet printed. The same goes for comic book creators who are interested in printing copies of their work.

What goes into printing the better booklet?

If you’re looking to have a standout booklet printed, the most important thing to look for is a printing company that can give you consistently vibrant full-color prints. This is true whether you’re having your magazine or catalogs digitally or color offset printed.

Keep in mind that the choice between digital or offset printing has little to do with quality. Both processes should always give you clear, beautiful and precise prints regardless. Instead, picking between one or the other depends on how soon you need the booklets and how many copies you need. For instance, if you need 300 or less, we recommend digital printing for saddle-stitched booklets with a maximum of 40 pages (or what we call “short run”). This is especially true if you’re looking for quicker turnaround times. For longer run booklets of 500 or more which have a maximum of 72 pages, it’s more cost-effective to go with offset printing. Either method can also be finished with perfect binding instead of saddle stitching.

Aside from printing techniques, pick out the appropriate printing material for your booklet. Your printer should typically have a variety you can select from. At SLB Printing, we can hook you up with glossy or matte stock, and you can choose between uncoated and laser weight options as well. We also offer self-cover or card stock covers. The former meaning that we can use the same paper for the cover as we do for the interior. For a cardstock cover, we can even customize your booklets to include pockets which you can use for ad inserts or calling cards.

Of course, getting an amazing-looking booklet is not a one-way street. To make sure you get the booklet of your dreams, it’s important to provide your printer with a high-resolution file to print. We request our clients to submit their PDF files built with 300dpi graphics and type generated in the CMYK format.

Perfect binding styles make perfect booklets

The final step to getting the perfect booklet is making sure it’s bound sturdily. Printing companies usually have thermally-activated and stitched binding. SLB Printing also offers saddle-stitched booklets which is durable and great for short run booklets, or you could go with our newest service: Perfect Binding.

Perfect Binding is the perfect option if you’re looking to have paperback book-quality binding done. This is great if you can imagine having your own trade paperbacks, manuals, or graphic novels printed in quantities of as little as 1 to as many as 250 (or even more).

SLB Printing offers perfect binding on booklets at a maximum size of 8.5” x 12”. We can do this on relatively thin booklets with a minimum of 5 sheets of paper to something as thick as 2-1/4 inches. You can always contact us for more size and paper options.

To find out which binding technique is perfect for your booklet, feel free to ask your printing company.

And that’s how it’s done!

Printing and binding the perfect booklet doesn’t have to be such a daunting experience. All it really takes is finding a great printing company who can walk you through the experience and make sure you get what you really want.

Call Us: 310-558-4752