Reply To: Perfect binding – pictures across the spine

In my experience with perfect bound magazines, the printers vary widely on this topic. One says to just make an educated guess as to how much to bump the images left/right because the amount changes with where it is in the book. Another will give me a number but won’t promise that it will work. It’s hard for me to believe that using the same measurement no matter what page it’s on or how many pages there are will provide satisfactory results.

This is something a good printer should be able to do for you, but so many of them nowadays have laid off the skilled prepress operators and replaced them with software, so you’re left to solve it. Systems like the Insite Proofing system are great for saving $$ but there is no human being involved in the process so the designer is responsible for any adjustments needed. You just upload the PDFs, approve them online, and off they go to the plates.

The best solution I have is to design around the problem – avoid crossovers if you can, and if you can’t, don’t have important information in the gutter. One magazine designer wanted the headline type split so that one letter was split down the middle – in that case I would definitely try to convince them to change the design so that there is white space there and the words are not split in the middle.

The other option is to spend more money and use a printer that still offers high quality prepress service.