Booklets and newsletters

The Resource Centre print room is well equipped for producing booklets. Lots of groups use it to produce community newsletters, event programmes and zines.

We have a booklet maker which automatically collates, folds and staples pages together, which makes the whole process much less laborious! You can use it to create A5 or A4 size booklets up to 40 pages long.

How much your booklet costs to print will depend on what size it is, how many copies you do, how many pages it has, and whether it is in colour or black and white. Contact us for a quote for your job.

General tips for designing booklets

1. Plan the number of pages you are going to produce.
   • If you would like your booklet to contain no inserts and be printed on every page, the number of pages must be a multiple of four. You could have a 4 page booklet (1 sheet of paper folded in half), an 8 page booklet (2 sheets of paper folded in half, one inside the other), a 12 page booklet (3 sheets) and so on.
   • If the number of pages you have is not a multiple of four, you might choose to include some blank pages (e.g. the back cover).
   • A third option is to include an insert. For example, a 6 page A4 newsletter can be produced by folding one sheet of A3 in half, and inserting a sheet of A4 inside it.
2. Think about the order the pages will print in. 
   • Remember that the pages should not print in 1,2,3 order. For example, for an 8 page booklet, the outside cover should display page 8 on the left and page 1 on the right.
   • All our printers can automatically print two pages on one side of paper, so you don’t need to lay your pages out in order if you don’t want to. However, if you do want to, make sure the pages are in the right order for the booklet you are making.
3. Leave a border around each page.
   • If you lay your pages out 2-up (two pages to a sheet, as they will look when they are printed), make sure you leave twice as much space between the two pages as you leave at the edges of the pages. This is because, when you fold them in half, the space in the centre will appear half on one page, half on the other.
   • If you design your pages separately, make sure they have at least a 1cm border all the way round. This stops you from losing the edges when you print them, and also leaves you enough space to fold them in the middle once they are printed in booklet format.
4. Design your pages in the size that you are going to print them.
   • If you design your pages A4 size and them print them A5 size, the text can end up printing out very small and difficult to read.

Community Newsletters

We have a lot of information available to help you if you are producing a community newsletter – click on the Information tab at the top of this page to find out more.

Spot colour and coloured paper

Full colour printing is a very expensive way to produce booklets, particularly if you are making more than just a handful of copies. Printing on coloured paper and/or using spot colour printing are much cheaper ways to add colour to your booklets. Have a look at our artwork page for information about spot colour printing. A full list of paper colours available at the Resource Centre is available here.