When it comes to romance, we’re told to “say it with flowers”, but in business, you very often need more than a dozen roses to get your message across. That’s where our brochure and booklet printing service comes in.
If the digital age has taught us anything, it’s the value and power of having information at your fingertips, and nothing provides a full-on visual experience like a beautifully designed, expertly printed booklet.
Forget the flimsy, poor-quality items you’ve come across in the past, and let us introduce you to a glossy, high-quality marketing tool, packed with important content, that you can put straight in your customers’ hands.
From catalogues to annual reports: getting the most out of booklet printing options
Booklets and brochures are among the most flexible ways to present information to a wide audience, whether it’s a saddle-stitched employee handbook, or a perfect-bound promotional booklet with your brand emblazoned on the spine.
The sky really is the limit – and whether your brochure runs to two single pages, four pages or 400, as long as it contains all the essential information you need, from helpful links to lists of your services, there’s no such thing as too few pages.
A helping hand with design
Many business owners know their particular field inside out may not be a dab hand at printing or booklet design. Don’t worry, that’s where we come in.
Our expert team will work closely with you to create brochures or print booklets that will look the business and will express everything you want to say.
So, how do we go from an idea for a booklet to the finished article?
What are the sizing options offered by our booklet printing service?
It begins with determining the paper size of your printed booklet. Is it just a few pages, or something more substantial? Does it need a front page and a back cover, and do you want to add blank pages?
Do you know the size of your printed booklets? Are we talking a double page document or single pages? It’s a lot of questions!
We can handle any size from A6 to A3, but our expert team are open to innovative and unconventional booklets too and are more than happy to tackle projects needing a custom size.
You can chat about your project with our friendly customer service team.
What are my booklet paper options?
No matter what your printed booklet is about or how many pages it needs to have, using a quality paper will turn it into something really special.
We offer a wide range of papers for both covers and pages with thicknesses from 80gsm to 350gsm.
If you don’t know what the best weight would be for your project’s pages, or you need to know the most affordable option, just give us a call.
Next we’ll focus on the type of paper, and we offer several choices for those all-important pages:
Silk coated pages
This has a smooth feel with a slight sheen to the page surface. It offers excellent ink-to-paper contrast, and the print colours appear distinct and clear.
Gloss coated
This too has a shiny surface as well as a very smooth print finish. The colour is sharp and stands out well on pages and the spine. Ink dries quickly, reducing the need for lamination (we’ll get to that later).
Premium Uncoated
This paper is absorbent, so printing inks appear flatter, while pages have a soft finish.
Again, if you’re not sure which product is right for your project’s pages, our friendly customer service team will do all they can to help nail those details.
Supporting a sustainable print business
Like thousands of companies, we’re fiercely proud of our green credentials. That’s why all our paper is carbon neutral and recycled options are available as part of our services.
We’ve teamed up with the Woodland Trust and joined its carbon capture scheme: our CO2 emissions from all paper purchases to help them plant trees right here in the UK.
We also strive to work with local businesses to reduce unnecessary transport costs and reduce our carbon footprint.
A range of booklet binding choices
So, we’ve established the purpose of your booklet, defined the size and chosen the paper before going to print. Now it’s time to decide how you want the finished product to be bound.
There are several binding options that cater to all pages, so let’s quickly run through them.
Saddle-stitched Booklets/Stapled Booklets
This is the most commonly used binding technique: folded sheets of paper are held together at the spine to make stapled booklets.
Saddle-stitched binding options are ideal for brochures, booklets and catalogues that run from eight to 48 pages, depending on the thickness of the pages.
Perfect-bound Brochures
This is a very popular option among customers with bigger print projects that have a higher number of pages that cannot be stitched or stapled.
Perfect-bound is the ideal booklet printing option for documents containing between 40 and around 700 pages (depending on the pages’ weight).
These can be portrait or square booklets with a back and front cover, and have a bigger spine width as they are packed with important content.
For the binding, the booklet pages and both the front cover and back cover are glued together at the spine, using a strong yet flexible glue for a smooth and stylish finish.
Wiro Binding
Also known as coil or spiral binding, wiro bound is suitable for all pages, with multiple pages stacked together and holes punched along the edge, before a metal coil or wire is fed through the holes and clamped shut.
It’s often used for reports, manuals, workbooks or reference books because the wire bound document lies perfectly flat.
The pages can be fully folded back around to rest on the back cover, something that’s not always possible with bigger documents that have been stapled.
Wiro bound is extremely flexible and ideal for printing projects of between eight and 360 printed pages. We even offer a number of different colour wires to compliment your brochure or booklet’s design.
Folding
For booklet projects that haven’t got a front cover, have a smaller number of pages or are perhaps even single page projects, sometimes the simplest solution is the most elegant – folding!
There are a number of ways to fold a custom size document: including half, roll, z and gatefold, all of which can create a great quality product that is both impactful and interesting.
Talk to our team and they’ll advise you on the best binding method for your print project, whether it’s stapled, wire-bound or folded.
Selecting the perfect finish for your booklet
If you choose to give your project a cover, then adding a particular finish can make all the difference to your booklets or brochures.
Of course, there’s a variety of print finishes available among our services, so let’s run through a few of them.
Lamination
Stationery fans do love a laminator – it’s great for enhancing solid colours or images, and a superb way to protect the cover of booklets such as employee handbooks. But did you know there are three different types?
- Matt lamination offers a soft, contemporary effect
- Gloss lamination gives a higher-quality cover shine finish than gloss card
- Soft-touch lamination has a peach-like cover texture and offers a really premium feel
Spot UV Varnish
This is a clear, shiny coating applied to specific areas of cover artwork for an eye-catching contrast: it’s a great choice for brochures or product catalogues.
Although it can be applied to a whole card, the ‘spot’ element means you can pick out one or a few elements of your design, such as your logo, or the booklet title, to make it stand out.
Embossing/Debossing
These techniques can offer both a tactile and visual boost to your booklets, particularly those with a thicker paper type on their front and back covers, or a bigger print document that has a perfect-bound spine.
For the record: embossing is when an element of a design is raised from the page, and debossing is when something is pressed down into it.
Foiling
If you’re looking for a booklet printing finish that will deliver the ‘wow’ factor, then you can’t beat foiling. It uses heat and pressure to bind a thin film of metal to different paper types, and is available in a wide range of vibrant, eye-catching colours.
It’s usually applied to specific sections of pages rather than the whole design, and is perfect for showing off text or logos for example, or drawing the eye to the spine of a perfect-bound booklet against a contrasting matt background.
Laser Cutting
As the name suggests, this process uses laser machinery to precisely cut your print to your chosen design.
A laser beam burns through the surface of the paper after brochure printing, and results in a high-quality finish that is tailor-made for super-intricate designs.
It’s definitely one to consider if you are looking to make an extra impact with the cover of your booklets.
Working with Bookmark
We work with some truly amazing clients and a great example is one of our most recent. Bookmark is a flexible, volunteer-led programme that gives children the reading skills and confidence they need for a fair chance in life.
They launched the Bookmark box: a precious treasure chest filled with items to make them feel welcome and comfortable in their new surroundings, and help them get to grips with the English language.
Let us bring your printed brochures to life
Whether you’re a non-profit organisation that wants to raise awareness of your work, a business looking to grow into new markets or an entrepreneur keen to engage more customers, we can help.
Our team will help with all aspects of your brochure: from page layout and design – making sure there’s enough content and all the information is where it needs to be – to helping select the best paper, binding and finish for your printed project.
And that’s not all! We offer a wide range of printing services that will complement every page of your brochures and booklets.
If you want to discuss your print project or learn more about our paper types or other products, call us on 020 7247 3556 or use this contact form, and we’ll get back to you ASAP.