Book Printing Gutter

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Book printing gutter.

Every page has three outside margins top bottom and side and one inside margin also called the gutter. These two products have binding types that are clamped and held together with glue. For book interiors intended to be printed only in black all graphics should be grayscale. A gutter is the section of the page that leads into the binding of perfect bound books and hard cover books.

That said go ahead and give the gutter a 1 margin so the content of your book doesn t get lost in the fold. Gutter margin margins are the blank spaces around the type area on a book page but the inside margin has the special name gutter and it is always the margin on the bound edge of the book page. The book fold layout sets you up for printing your masterpiece automatically in the correct order ready for folding and binding. But for a book with full page images and most importantly two page spreads the gutter requires a bit of added attention.

For most books an additional 0 2 or 0 3 inches on the inside edge of the page is plenty to create a gutter. This could cause issues further on as the gutter margin is the amount of space between the content of your book and the fold where the pages of the book will be bound together. On books intended for offset it depends on the number of pages longer books need more gutter margins and kind of binding perfect binding creates tighter spines. Consequently i always make the gutter margins on books intended for print on demand larger to make sure the type doesn t disappear into the gutter making it difficult to read.

By default the gutter margin will be set to 0. The gutter is the space between each copy of your postcard on the press sheet. Let s say you have a print book that is 5 25 wide by 8 tall. Gutters are setup during the prepress phase of the printing process and something your printer will handle once your design files are handed off.

Just what is a gutter margin and how do you set it for your book so that it can be properly published. For example if you are printing a postcard multiple copies of the postcard will fit on a single press sheet. And all kinds of page layout software even ms word can automatically add a gutter to your specifications with ease. This process will cause a curve of the pages coming from the spine when the book is open.

Whether you want to create a booklet for an event or print out an ambitious book project consider using the pre built page settings for booklets that comes with word. First let s look at the basics.