OT: Printing Production Question (fold-in covers)
phyllisj9 Nov 4, 2011 6:42 AMAllright this is a printing question, but I think the folks on this forum will know the answer!
Each year I work on a Program Guide which has a trim size of 3.625" wide x 8.75" tall. It has a 4-panel cover which folds into the back. The front cover is 3.625" wide (like the rest of the book), but each of the other 3 panels is successively .125" narrower than the panel next to it. That means that the back cover is actually only 3.5" wide so it folds in short, such that it doesn't quite fully cover the width of the pages in the book. As it's in the back and not so visible, it doesn't really matter.
And in case that paragraph is hard to follow, here's a visual:
http://www.rotor.com/temp/CoverFoldingInstructions.pdf
I worked from an existing template to create this cover, so I haven't modified these dimensions (basically the Guide's always been this way, so we kept going with it).
My question is: Does it need to fold short? Is this template incorrect? My co-workers want the fold-in part moved to the front of the book (making the front cover fold in rather than the back), but I'm guessing the short fold was to prevent the different folds in the cover from getting trimmed off. However, I don't understand the printing process well enough to know for sure (and I wasn't around when the template was designed so am not sure what the logic was).
If both of the cover panels were the same width, would this cause problems in production? Is it necessary for production to have it fold short? These guides are saddle-stitched. I don't know when trimming occurs in the process, but I'm guessing the short bit is so the folds are well out of the way of the trimmer (?).
I hope this question makes sense. I'm trying to figure out whether to tell my co-workers that they should or should not move the fold-in portion to the front. I'm definitely going to talk to the printer before changing the template, but I'm just hoping to get some feedback and advice here as we're going to have a meeting discussing different changes we might make to this guide. Unfortunately, I almost never get a chance to actually visit a printing press or I might be able to watch some of the production in process (and have a better feel for how things work).
Thanks for any input,
Phyllis





