Custom Catalog Printing

Page count comes in fours, and it decides the binding

A printed sheet folds into four pages, so every saddle-stitched catalog has a page count divisible by four — 8, 12, 16, 24, 32. Ask for 30 pages and you will get 32 with two blanks, and it is better to plan the extra two than to have them appear at the end. Perfect binding is divisible by two, because pages are trimmed and glued rather than folded in pairs.

The count also decides the binding, because saddle stitch stops working as the spine thickens: past about 64 pages on a normal stock the inner pages creep out at the fore-edge and the staples strain.

Creep, and why the outer margin moves

In a saddle-stitched book the inner pages sit further from the fold than the outer ones, so if every page is laid out identically the inner spreads lose more at the trim. On a thick catalog that shift is visible: page numbers wander toward the edge and a full-bleed image loses a few millimeters more in the middle of the book than at the front.

The fix is done at imposition — each spread is shifted slightly inward as it approaches the center — and it is our job, not yours. What you have to do is keep anything important away from the trim edge, which is the same discipline as any print job and is covered in our guide to print-ready artwork files.

Never run type across the gutter on a perfect-bound catalog. The spine swallows several millimeters and the page does not open flat to give them back.

Stock, and what it does to your photography

The single most common regret is uncoated stock chosen for how it feels, on a catalog whose whole job is showing color and texture in product shots. Ask for a printed sample of your own images on both before deciding.

• Coated silk, 130–170 gsm — the catalog default: photographs hold detail, no glare under a lamp.
• Coated gloss — punchier color, more reflection; suits food and hard goods, tiring to read.
• Uncoated, 120–150 gsm — soft, tactile, and it flattens photographs; right for a brand that is selling craft rather than detail.
• A heavier cover, 250–300 gsm, on any catalog that will be posted or handled repeatedly.

The cover, which takes all the wear

A catalog cover is folded, posted, stacked and carried, and it fails at the spine and the corners first. A heavier stock, a matte lamination and a scored spine handle all three; gloss lamination looks sharper on day one and shows every scuff by the time it reaches a customer. A spot gloss over a matte cover gives the shine exactly where the product photograph is and nowhere else — the trade-off we set out in our guide to choosing a print finish.

Printing 100 and printing 5,000 are different jobs

Short runs are printed digitally: no plates, no make-ready, a cost per copy that barely moves with quantity, and a genuine option to print 100 rather than commit to a warehouse full. Long runs go on litho, where the plates and make-ready are a fixed cost that gets cheaper per copy the longer the run.

The crossover is usually somewhere between 500 and 1,500 copies depending on the page count and the colors, and it is worth quoting both. The arithmetic behind that crossover is the same one in our note on what a short run really costs.

The catalog is one piece of a set

A catalog almost never travels alone: it goes out with a price list that changes more often than the catalog does, a covering letter, and sometimes a sample. Printing the prices inside the catalog is what forces an early reprint, so most trade catalogs keep them on a loose insert. The folder that carries the set to a meeting is on our pocket folders with glued document pockets page.