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brochure printing
 
Brochure printing, accounts for a large part of commercial printers yearly work in the UK today. Coming all shapes and sizes they are an invaluable sales aid, often being a companies first point of contact with their potential customer, and as such every aspect of it must be just right. A good brochure will be well designed with print and finishing all carried out to the highest standard. The smallest detail can make the difference between it generating a follow up from the prospective customer or being put in the pile with the rest of the ‘also rans’. This makes it vital to get the whole process just right. On this page we endeavour explain some of the options available to you and to guide you through some of the potential pitfalls you must avoid when getting a quality brochure produced.
Selecting a format
Unlike magazines and business stationery brochures tend to have a lot more variety in their sizes, often designers will advise clients to go for odd sizes to make the finished piece stand out amongst the others vying for attention in a display stand. More>

Spot Colour v Full Colour
Spot colour process’ requires less plates than ‘4 colour process’, usually only 1 or 2 the first normally being black and a second colour of your choice. Although they can be any colours you like i.e. metallic or even varnishes. More>


Selecting a format

Unlike magazines and business stationery brochures tend to have a lot more variety in their sizes, often designers will advise clients to go for odd sizes to make the finished piece stand out amongst the others vying for attention in a display stand.
While this strategy has some merit, it must be clearly though through. Consideration should be give as to the practicalities and cost implications of creating a ‘non custom’ publication.

Plate practicalities
Firstly 'can it easily be imposed (fitted) onto the printers plate?' If it is longer than a standard A4 page it will require to be printed on an A3 sheet, this will cost more. Another thought must be 'will it easily fit into a display unit?'. If not it may never get the chance to impress as it will simply not be placed amongst its genre where it should be. As with most publications it will be well worth your time researching your competitors to see how they have tackled the same problem, this will undoubtedly give you lots of food for thought.


Click image below to view standard paper sizes.
(Opens in a popup)

  
RA sizes are slightly bigger than the A sizes as they allow for trimming after printing; SRA is slightly larger again to allow for bleed on the pages and for trimming
A0 841 x 1189
A1 594 x 841
A2 420 x 594
A3 297 x 420
A4 210 x 297
A5 148 x 210
A6 105 x 148

RAO 860 x 1220
RA1 610 x 860
RA2 430 x 610

SRA0 900 x 1280
SRA1 640 x 900
SRA2 450 x 640
(all sizes are in millimetres)

printed page sizes

Ask your designers advice.
The number of pages may also play a important role in making the correct choice of format. Is your brochure a long pitch all brochures are a multiple of 4 pages i.e. they will have 4, 8, 12, 16 or 20 pages etc. Naturally the less pages you need to print the cheaper so it makes sense not to decide on 48 pages if you don't have the copy and images to fill it. Your designer will be able to help you here by supplying them with the copy and pictures you desire they should be able to show you roughs of what the likely format and pagination will best suit your content.
At this stage you should be able to play around resizing pictures, changing fonts, font sizes and leading or adjusting page bleeds. These are just a few of the ways that your designer can make the foot fit the shoe. Be sure when deciding on a page layout that you print it off at actual size on your laser printer, looking at a page on screen can be deceptive! A font that looks fine on your monitor may look tiny on the printed page. It is very important to get it right at this point as from here on mistakes can be expensive!
Spot Colour v Full Colour

Often used when printing brochures the ‘spot colour process’ requires less plates than ‘4 colour process’, usually only 1 or 2 the first normally being black and a second colour of your choice. Although they can be any colours you like i.e. metallic or even varnishes.
Spot colour Benefits
The advantage of ‘spot colour process’ over ‘full colour process’ is that when using spot colour the colours are pre mixed true inks. This differs from the ‘full colour process’ in that it uses the four colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black in unmixed ink combination to create the illusion of other colours. If you look closely at a full colour(CMYK process job) you will notice a matrix of tiny dots of the four colours. A spot colour job printed in say black and purple will use black and an actual purple ink which will be pre mixed by the printer and applied to the page.

Better results
So what does this all mean? Well because of this ink mixing a ‘spot colour job’ will always have more punch than its cmyk counterpart. This is often reason enough to opt for spot colour over the CMYK process. Also due to less plates and less ‘wash through’ when cleaning the press for the next colour the two colours used in the spot colour job should cost you less. There are however some mitigating factors to this, as it may be that if you are getting your brochure printed by a large commercial printer it will be part a larger sheet combined with other clients jobs that are all run together and then trimmed later. This economics of scale favours the CMYK process as individual client jobs are unlikely to all use the identical pre mixed inks of the same required colour that would aggregated pages on one large sheet.

The ‘Wow’ factor
In conclusion it would be fair to say that spot colour jobs are for the most part best reserved for small to medium run jobs where quality of finish requires the extra wow factor achievable by true colour that this process allows. The exception to this is probably when using special finishes on cmyk jobs where a fifth and occasionally sixth ink/varnish will be added to a ‘full process page’ to give certain coloured areas look unachievable through the four colour process. Magazine covers are a good example of this.
Related Sections

Selecting the stock
Paper comes in a wide variety of weights(thickness) and finishes. Some rough to the touch some smooth, many papers are off white in colour and some are more suitable to printing on than others. The type of paper chosen can make a huge difference to . More>

Special Finishes
As well as types of paper, there are options on finishes that will effect a printed piece. These can be special inks such as metallics, pastels and hexachrome© colours. Additionally there are options on coated, uncoated and matte finishes that can have a dramatic effect on your print job.. More>

Pre press considerations
As well as the common decisions that have to be made when setting up a job for print there are a few others unique to magazine printing that have to be considered before the design work can actually begin. These include . More>

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