Reply To: Perfect binding – pictures across the spine

Hi Colin,

Thanks for your reply.

These were verbal specs from the printer that took us a few phone calls to clear up, as we were given different instructions from the art director when we took on the job.

We’ve been producing this magazine for about 9 years now. I haven’t spoken to the printer about this setup for a few years, but they’ve also never told me to stop doing it. Last time I specifically asked them about it, they asked me to still carry on doing what I was doing. The printer did mention that not all their clients go to this trouble, but they would prefer it if they did.

About a year ago, we produced a special edition of the magazine which was printed overseas (our normal printer is in Australia, the special edition was printed in China) and they gave me exactly the same requirements about splitting pics across the spine as the printer here wants.

You mention a cross-over between the inside cover and the first/last page of the book. This is the only occurrence that our printer says don’t do anything and just give us normal, single page PDFs and we’ll work the magic at our end.

I don’t know if this makes a difference or not, but the magazine has a print run of between 90,000 and 100,000 copies and ranges from 164 to 212 pages.