Something sparked my interest in parent sheet sizes yesterday. I don’t remember what it was, but I was rather disappointed to not find much information when I searched for parent sheet imposition and prepress tips.
When you’re thinking about sizing and folds for a new design, particularly for brochures or invitations, you have to take into consideration what will be the most economical to lay out on parent sheets when printing.
Parent sheets are the large sheets that printers initially print a project on. These are usually set up so that cutting and folding of common paper sizes (like 8.5x11) are easy.
The usual parent sizes are 17x22, 19x25, 23x35, 25x38 and 26x40 for the U.S., and A2, A1, and A0 for Europe and other countries that use ISO sizes. I sure like the ISO paper system; everything is half of the next size up. That is so nice and easy!
If you are printing on a very specific paper (like from your beautiful sample books), be sure to see what the parent sheet sizes are and which way the paper grain runs. The grain of the paper is which way most of the fibers run and because of the paper making process, most of the fibers are usually aligned the same way.
In your sample books, grain is often indicated with bolded numbers and it’s usually the second number, so if the sheet size is listed as 23x35, the grain direction would most likely be going the length; if it was 35x23, it would run the width. The grain direction is important for cutting and scoring (folding) purposes.
Be aware of deckled edges (ragged, uncut edges in handmade papers), too; they can reduce the paper’s printable area.
Yeah, ok, so how does knowing all this help you plan your project?
Easy:
Say, for example, you are doing a z-fold brochure and you design it to be 3 panels that are 8 inches long each (24 inches total). If you were to cut that down by half an inch per panel, you’d be able to print on smaller parent sheets, and reduce your costs.
So what are some really easy ways (like reducing the final paper size) that can help you save money on a project? Any ideas? Toon, I bet you know!
And, while we’re on it, I’ve always gone with the standard that book/ booklet projects need to have pages numbering in multiples of four (assuming quarto folds, or folded in half and then in half again to produce eight pages). When might one use a folio fold (parent sheet folded in half) or an octavo (folded in half three times) fold? Do books/booklets always have to number multiples of four?
Another good thing about knowing the size of the sheet to be printed on is you get extra room to add your own job to the side.. i had lecturers who would put business cards or flyers at the side.. in a recent HOW, they suggested putting stuff that a charity could use.. just talk to your printer about it first..
also, i sometimes forget you guys use inches! *shudders*
Alex Charchar’s last blog post..Typographic Marks Unknown
Alex,
Yeah, I know you can do things like that but how do you set that up? I guess like you said, work it out with the printer first. Hehe, I prefer working with points and picas when I’m layout out my projects. But those fit into inches better than metric measurements. Inches really are weird for page layout—crazy decimals and fractions that have no meaning! Plus for me, after working with letterpress, I can picture pretty well what a point and pica is!
I second Alex’s shudder! I love metric and I love the ISO paper system. Of course if I’d grown up with imperial it wouldn’t seem so foreign. (Although I still need height in feet & inches and baby weight in pounds & ounces for it to have relative significance for me!)
Ooh, also, we have this printer at work that spazzes out every time someone sends it an 8.5x11 document. It wants you to load that paper size in the printer and it’s very hard to delete the job to get your job to come out.
Anywho, as far as paper saving goes, I have no ideas. I like Alex’s about printing something else on the side though.
Ahhh the point and the pica.. Always hard for me to get my head around them because I’m yet to work in them, except for type.. Although I think I’ll have to learn quickly for when I start setting up stuff for letterpress..
It’s actually amazing how much you can do when you talk to your printer.. or more specifically, the prepress guys.. i did work experience in a print shop and there is a world of difference between the reps at the front, who you would talk to the most, and the prepress guys.. it’s those second bunch of guys who will make your jobs special and really help you out
Kris,
Metric and the ISO paper systems seem more well thought out than our imperial system for sure. And base 10 just makes more sense than base… erm… yeah
Alex,
I do really want to talk to the prepress people, at the very least to get their opinions on common problems (I bet a lot of them think us designers just don’t know anything about print!) and how they like files submitted. Most of our jobs go through a print broker, though, so I don’t actually get a lot of contact with the print shop people.