Creating
CD DVD Booklet Printer Spreads
For inexperienced
designers, figuring out the correct page sequencing
when designing a CD Booklet or DVD Booklet can be
rather confusing. This article is intended to
clarify the difference between what looks right and
what is actually right. In short, Printer Spreads
versus Reader Spreads.
If you’d like to include additional information in
your CD duplication or DVD duplication project you
will likely need to incorporate a booklet into your
budget and designs.
Booklets tend to be more popular than “folders”
because we’re much more accustomed to the format of
a booklet. Just like a book or magazine, a booklet
is folded in half and is stapled in the middle, so
they are very compact and easy to browse through.
Printer Spread Page
Sequencing
Designing the booklet for your CD duplication or DVD
duplication project shares many of the same design
rules that apply to every other aspect of your
project, but there is one commonly overlooked aspect
we want to bring to your attention: Printer
Spreads.
Through a whole lifetime of familiarity with books
and magazines we know that ‘page 3’ comes after
‘page 2’ and then ‘page 4’ comes after ‘page 3’.
This is absolutely correct after a book has been
printed, cut, assembled and stitched but you
actually have to design it counter-intuitively.
For the purposes of your CD duplication or DVD
duplication project your ‘booklet’ is a series of 2
panel folders that are stacked together, stapled and
then folded to create the book. There is a specific
page order required to assure the booklet has the
correct page sequence after it has been assembled,
and this sequence (or page order) is referred to as
Printer Spreads.
Create A Mock-Up
The best way for you to see this is to make a
Printer Spread mock-up of something simple. Here’s
how you can create a Printer Spread mock-up of a 4
panel (8 page) booklet using two pieces of scrap
paper:
-
Stack two pieces of
paper together (face to face).
-
Fold the stack
evenly in half.
-
Put a staple in the
fold to keep the two pieces of paper together as
to create a booklet.
-
Now number each
page beginning with the front cover as ‘page 1’.
-
After you’ve
finished remove the staple and take the booklet
apart.
If you’ve done this
correctly you should have a total of eight pages
that relate to each other as follows:
What is "Reader Spread"
Page Sequencing?
Now having said all of that, and we don’t want to
confuse you, but it is important that you know the
difference between Printer Spreads and “Reader
Spreads”.
Due to the counter-intuitive page sequence involved
with Printer Spreads it’s easy to image that
proofing a large booklet for your CD duplication or
CD manufacturing project could get rather confusing.
Reader Spreads
can be created so the pages are formatted in the
same intuitive way that the “reader” would
experience them when viewing the finished booklet
(after the booklet was assembled and stitched). As
you learned from creating your mock-up, while
“Reader Spreads” are all well and good for viewing
the pages in a more true-to-life manner you cannot
use Reader Spread page sequencing for printing or it
would lead to rather disastrous results.
|
