Allied Bindery

Bound for Excellence

Archives for August 2011

Drilling – Remember the Margins

  You’ve just received a call from your bindery service provider informing you that they have stopped drilling your project because text or graphics are being drilled through. Now what?

 If you’re lucky, the content or design being drilled through is inconsequential. But what if the data being compromised is pricing information, or, product identification codes? Perhaps it’s a data chart? You could be facing a reprint or a significant discount to your customer, who will most likely be unhappy with the final product.

 Allowing for drill hole margins is crucial to meeting the quality expectation of your customer. In all likelihood, they expect the printer to think of attributes like this. Failure to include necessary margins to avoid drilling text or graphics will result in cosmetic failures, at best, or the elimination of critical information, at worst.

 Whether a book is being drilled for inclusion into a standard three ring binder or a special five hole automotive post binder, an appropriate gutter margin must be allowed on both text and covers. Also, it’s important not to forget how drilling may effect any fold out forms or bound reply cards. Each of these items may be easily overlooked, particularly if your company does not consistently produce drilled products.

 Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery can help you avoid these types of problems. We can provide you with the appropriate margins or templates that allow you to effectively plan for projects with drilling requirements. Give us a call at 248-588-5990 and let us help you achieve your customer’s expectations.

Round Cornering for Visual Enhancement

Publishers, Designers and Printers often look for cost effective ways of making their project more attractive or eye catching.  One option to consider is the round cornering of your bound or stitched project.

Round cornering provides a smooth, symmetrical curve to the face edges of the product, providing a visual effect that can be eye catching.

 There are a number of things to remember when considering the use of round cornering:

  • There are several sizes of round corner dies, so, it is best to provide the bindery with the trim size of the project so that the correct round corner dimensions may be provided.
  •  Although round cornering can be applied to either perfect bound or saddle stitched books, it is most visually pleasing on perfect bound work.  A saddle stitch book, by design, will not have as smooth of a face trim as a perfect bound book.  As a result, the round cornering will not look perfectly smooth on a saddle stitched product.
  • The design of the cover and text must be done with the round cornering in mind.  The project must be designed so that the round corner cuts do not remove or impede upon any graphics or text.  Plan for at least 1/8” clearance between the round corner and any text or graphics that must remain on the cover design.

 Involving the Sales and Planning Professionals at Allied Bindery can help you plan for any round cornering requirements.  Review of project trim size, thickness and cover and text design will result in a superior end product for your customer.