Thread, staples, wire or glue.
When you are laying out a book, a pamphlet or a catalog remember to consider how your work is going to be bound.
It is vital to have your binding method in mind when you start to design your project. Each way of binding has its own idiosyncrasies that need to be factored in to your work. Some bindings require greater margins, or that the text and images be placed at greater distances from the spine. Even if everything looks perfect on screen, you don’t want to see everything shift, become off-center and ruin your work during the binding.
3 More Points to consider:
1. Binding affects imposition and the paper you choose. You need to be conscious of how your design will be imposed when printed. Because bindings work best when the bind is parallel to the paper’s grain direction you will want to be aware of the grain direction when printing.
2. Mind your outer margins. Bindings like saddle-stitching result in something we call ‘creep,’ which means that center pages will stick out further than outer pages. Because of this after the stitching is done the pages will be trimmed, and you don’t want any of your design chopped off when it is. And also mind your center margins, because it goes without saying that you don’t want to have your design running into areas that will eventually be stapled or glued.
3. Certain papers, such as coated covers, may have a tendency to crack during the binding process, so choose your paper carefully. Remember to ask questions early, test the papers you want to use and always prepare a dummy to see how the all the components will work together.
