JUST A FEW HELPFUL
     TIPS AND INFORMATION

PAPER TERMS
Brightness: Refers to the percent of light reflected back from a sheet of paper as measured by a light meter reading.
Bond: Basic, strong durable paper grade used for letterheads, forms, copying, etc.
Carbon: Lightweight tissue paper that has been coated with a carbon ink that will transfer an image to another sheet when pressure is applied.
Carbonless: Most often used for multiple part forms, contains a chemical coating on the front, back, or both sides of the paper, transfers impression from one page or ply to the next due to the bursting of tiny microcapsules in the chemical coating used to release a darkened copy of the impression occurring on the first sheet.
Coated: Paper that has had a coating applied to give the sheet a better appearance and improve its printability, can also be associated with enamel.
Cover: Stiff heavyweight paper used when durability is a concern, also called card stock.
Gloss: A shiny look reflecting light.
Grain: The direction in which the paper fibers lie.
Laid: Has the appearance of translucent lines running horizontally and vertically in the paper.
Matte: Dull paper or ink finish.
Ream: 500 sheets of text paper, or 250 sheets of cover paper.
Text: Paper stock used for products such as books, pages of reports, and other items that do not require the stiffness of card stock.
Watermark: A distinctive design created in paper at the time of manufacture that can be easily seen by holding the paper up to the light.

COLOR TERMS
Color Separations: The process of preparing artwork, photographs, etc. for printing by separating it into the four primary printing colors (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black).
PMS: The abbreviated name of the Pantone Color Matching System.
Process Color Printing: Uses four inks (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) to produce all other colors. Also called Full-Color Printing, or Four-Color Printing.
Spot Color Printing: Refers to a method of specifying and printing colors in which each color is printed with its own ink.

PRINTING TERMS
Blanket: The thick rubber mat on a printing press that transfers ink from the plate to the paper.
Bleed: Printing that goes to the edge of the sheet after trimming.
Digital Printing: Any type of print reproduction method that utilizes electronic files to produce a printed piece from dots of ink, toner, or dye, which is printed directly from a computer file.
Grippers: The metal fingers on a printing press that hold the paper as it passes through the press.
Hard Copy: The output of a computer printer or typed text sent for typesetting.
Image Area: Portion of paper on which ink can appear.
Impression: Putting an image on paper.
Imposition: Positioning printed pages so they will fold in the proper order.
Offset Printing: Printing technique that transfers ink from a plate, to a blanket, to paper instead of directly from computer to paper.
Pica: Unit of measure in typesetting. One pica = 1/6 inch.
Plate: Piece of paper, metal, plastic, or rubber carrying an image to be reproduced on a press.
Signature: A sheet of printed pages which when folded become part of a book or publication.
Trim Size: The final size of a printed image after the last trim is made.
Wash-up: Removing printing ink from a press before putting on another ink color.

Folded Brochure Example

Guidelines For Printing

Things To Consider

DESIGNING YOUR OWN
Perhaps you already have a layout in mind and would like to design your brochure or flyer yourself. Let us make sure you get the quality you deserve so your design pops. We offer the same high standards of proof-reading and layout management for customer designed projects as those we design ourselves for our customers. We won't just slap your carefully fashioned project onto a press and hope it's "okay." We want you to be satisfied regardless of whether you designed your item or we have. In order to assure the best quality, we ask that you please take a moment to look at the links just to the left. These links will help you in your design process and keep the amount of challenges that we might face down to a minimum, which will help us get your special project back to you quicker.