How to print a booklet from your own layout
Print a booklet with Layout by Zaweba's booklet imposition: 2-up saddle stitch or perfect bound, with creep, so the pages come out in the right order to fold.
Booklet imposition is how Layout by Zaweba prints booklets. Lay the pages out in reading order as normal, then choose booklet imposition with 2-up saddle stitch or perfect bound, and Layout rearranges them onto sheets so that, once folded and stapled or bound, they read in the right order. It also allows for creep, the way inner pages push outwards in a thick folded booklet.
This is the step that defeats most home booklet attempts. Page 1 and the last page share a sheet, page 2 sits beside the second to last, and working it out by hand for a 24 page programme is a recipe for upside down pages.
Reader's spreads and printer's spreads
You design in reader's spreads: pages 2 and 3 side by side, as someone holding the finished booklet sees them. The printer needs printer's spreads: the pairs of pages that actually share a sheet. Booklet imposition turns one into the other at output, so the document itself never needs to be rearranged. Keep designing the way a reader will read it.
What you need before you start
A saddle stitched booklet, folded and stapled through the spine, needs a page count that's a multiple of four, because every sheet folded in half gives four pages. If your content runs to 22 pages, add two (a notes page and an inside back cover, perhaps) rather than leaving blanks in odd places.
Set the page size to the finished, folded size, not the sheet size. A booklet that ends up A5 is laid out on A5 pages, and the imposition puts two of them side by side on each sheet.
Decide about bleed. If pictures or colour run off the edge, set bleed in the document. Layout sets bleed per edge, and joined inner edges never get bleed, which is exactly what a folded spread wants.
Imposing and printing
Finish the layout with all pages in order. Run through preflight, which already watches the document for overset text, missing fonts and pictures, low resolution, RGB in print and bleed problems.
Then choose booklet imposition and pick the binding. Saddle stitch suits programmes, menus, newsletters and short booklets. Perfect bound is for thicker documents where gathered sections are glued at the spine. Set creep if the booklet is thick enough for the inner pages to stick out beyond the outer ones once folded; Layout shifts the pages slightly to compensate.
Export the imposed result as a PDF, or print it directly. For an office printer, print double sided, flipping on the short edge for landscape sheets, then fold the stack and staple along the crease.
Getting a neat booklet
Print one copy first and fold it before running off fifty. A test copy shows straight away whether the duplex settings on your printer match what the imposition expects.
Keep important text away from the spine and the outer edges. Folded paper doesn't open completely flat, and text that sits right on the fold disappears into it. A slightly larger inside margin helps.
If you use page numbers, place them on the parent page so every page picks them up, and check the first and last sheets carefully, since those are where mistakes show most.
When a print shop is doing it
Many printers prefer to impose the job themselves. In that case, send ordinary single pages in reading order as a press PDF with crop and bleed marks, or use Package to gather the document, pictures and fonts with a report. Ask before you impose: a printer who wanted single pages will have to undo it.
Other outputs that help
Alongside booklets, the same part of Layout produces contact sheets, useful for checking a picture set or showing a client every page at a glance, and plain text or RTF exports of stories when the words need to go elsewhere.
With Layout by Zaweba the booklet is designed once, in the order people read it, and the sheet order is worked out for you at the end.
