booklet printing design
Graphic Design

5 tips for booklet design – Graphic Design Friday

Booklet design can seem like a daunting task since booklets include several pages of text, graphics, and work. Creating them correctly from the start though, can save a lot of time and frustration. In today’s Graphic Design Friday post, Sharon talks about booklet design. She has tips for typography, layout, and even the best design programs to use when creating your booklet.

You can read the transcript for today’s video below, but if you don’t want to miss Sharon’s smiling face, I’d suggest watching the video.

Video Transcript

Hello and welcome back for another graphic design tip from PrintPlace.com.

Booklet design encompasses nearly every aspect of graphic design.  Good typography, layout, and illustration all work together to create an effective booklet presentation.

Booklet design almost always begins with the copy, usually provided in a sprawling Word document for you to decipher, so let’s concentrate on typography first.

  • Use no more than two to three typefaces throughout the booklet.  Stick to clean, readable fonts, and avoid decorative fonts if possible.
  • Bold sans serif fonts make great headlines.  Subheaders are generally thinner or italicized.  They can be either serif or sans serif.
  • Body copy generally looks best in a serif font. The serifs make each letter distinctive and easier to read quickly.

 There are no hard and fast rules for booklet illustration.  Just make sure your illustration supports and works with your type.

  • Consider dividing your copy in two or three columns and make use of text wrapping to embed your graphics within the page.
  • You can also add interest to a spread using crossover graphics. Use photos or illustrations to connect content across a spread.

When printing a booklet with PrintPlace.com, there are a few things that will make the process go as smoothly as possible. I suggest using Adobe InDesign for creating your booklet. Other programs such as Publisher will work, but I have found InDesign saves a lot of time while setting up your file.

  • Within InDesign, create a new file, and make sure “facing pages” is checked.  This will allow you to design in spreads. Then set your margin and bleed to .125.  Hit “OK” and you’re ready to design.
  • Finally, go to “Export” and choose “Adobe PDF (Print).” In the PDF settings, choose “High Quality Print” with Acrobat 6 compatibility. Make sure “All” pages is checked and that “pages” rather than “spreads” are selected. Our system receives booklet PDF’s in sequential order, then automatically arranges them back into spreads for printing.
  • Under the “Marks and Bleeds” section, check the box for “Use Document Bleed Settings”. You are now ready to export your file.

One last note.  When printing through PrintPlace, the total number of pages must be divisible by 4, with a minimum of 8 pages. This includes the cover, so an 8 page booklet has 4 inside pages plus the front and back cover which ads an extra four pages.

That’s all for this week!

Did you know we’ve started a new video series? Every few months we spotlight a business doing exceptional things using products from PrintPlace.com.  Last week, we caught up with Steve Goff from Ceda Realty to talk about how business cards make a difference in his company.  Click here to watch the video.

I’ll see you next week!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *