What You Need To Know About Printing Tri-Fold Brochures
Tri-fold brochures are some of the most common printed products that businesses order. Organizations employ them to deliver everything from informative pamphlets to restaurant menus. They are very simple and convenient, but there are four concepts you should understand before you take your work to a tri-fold brochure printing services provider.
Printing Techniques
Ink-based printing tends to come in four forms. Black-and-white printing is, as the name suggests, just black ink being jetted onto paper. This is usually the cheapest option.
Color printing tends to use either four- or six-color processes. The four-color process is sometimes called CMYK, letters that stand for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. It's the cheaper of the two processes and best for projects that only utilize simple graphics and don't demand photographic picture quality. The six-color process is more expensive and produces more realistic imagery, but most customers only use it for glossy products.
Finally, there is a process called spot color. Spot color is essentially the black-and-white process with one color thrown in. It has fallen out of favor in recent years because most modern printers produce products in spot color with a CMYK process anyhow. Generally, spot color is now utilized to make an impression.
Weight of Paper
The heaviness of paper is usually referred to in pounds. Roughly speaking, 24 pounds is about what you'd expect from a decent letter paper. 100 pounds is closer to good card stock, such as what is used for high-end greeting cards.
Finish and Brightness
Paper also is referred to as having either a matte or gloss finish. Glossy products are typically more expensive.
You'll also sometimes hear the term brightness used to refer to the appearance of the paper, especially if it is white. This is a scale that goes from 0 to 100. As you go up the scale, the paper reflects more light, making it look brighter.
Bleed
One of the biggest sources of cost in printing a run of tri-fold brochures is bleed. This refers to how close the ink on the paper gets to the edge of the paper in the finished product.
Full-bleed items, in particular, are more expensive. Regardless of the bleed level of a product, it is initially printed with a margin. In order to accommodate full-bleed orders, the company prints the brochures on larger sheets of paper and cuts the margins down until the ink stops right at the edge.
For more information, contact a company that offers tri-fold brochure printing services.
