OUGD503 (Brief 1): First final prints of zines

I played around with photographs for several different subjects, as well as testing lettering compositions as front cover designs for various titles.  In the end due to financial limitations I chose the most favoured sets of photographs to take forward and have printed.  These were for Venice, Berlin, and Amsterdam.

The first final prints of booklets for Berlin and Venice were printed on recycled A3 stock, using crop marks as a guide for me to remove the excess paper before folding and staple binding.  The Berlin zine was A5 size and Venice B5; the difference in size is down to the restrictions of the A5 format for the photographs from Venice.  This booklet contains a larger set of photos and includes a small thumbnail photo on the back page.  I used the digital print facilities in college to produce all three zines, though the Amsterdam booklet was printed using a specialist printer, which folds and binds booklets after printing them which reduces the additional process of cutting and binding manually that had to be done for the others.

Through this process I learnt several things which will improve my work in the future, such as accuracy being a key skill when putting together the final piece. It is essential to double check that the crop marks are cut exactly to the millimetre as well as folding each spread so full bleed images across the centre line up with no break in-between.

Final products:

add venice in

I learnt that when staple binding the pages, they need to be lined up exactly to ensure accuracy, as well as having the outside cover of the booklet facing upwards so that the long, straight edge of the staple is on the outside.  It is also essential to cut to crop marks exactly so that when the booklet is put together the full bleed images across the spreads line up accurately.


The Amsterdam zine was printed, bound and stapled in the machine so there was no need to crop and bind by hand, resulting in a more accurate finish.  This was possible because there are no full bleed images in the zine.  Unfortunately, the intended size of A5 ended up being slightly smaller as the printer didn't print the layout centrally.  Using a guillotine I was able to fix this problem by measuring the correct amount to cut off.

This has produced a much more accurate finish and would be suitable to mass produce as each booklet would be the same due to the printer's consistency.

View the projects on Behance here:

Berlin
Amsterdam