Deciding on a brochure design structure: Binding and Folding
It is important to get your brochure structure correct. In many cases the budget will dictate the structure of your brochure design and in general, high-end products and services providers will want to portray quality across their marketing efforts. These clients mainly decide to have their brochure designed using a particular type of binding. Other products and services might opt for a more cost effective brochure fold that might fit well with their product or service offering. Some of the most common types of brochure fold and brochure bindings are listed below: Thanks to BigNet Web Design Dublin for some of the website images.
Bi-fold Brochure Design
A bi-fold brochure is typically a single sheet of paper of any size, folded in two and printed on both sides. A bi-fold brochure can be made to have symmetrical or asymmetrical folds.
Tri-fold Brochure Design
A tri-fold brochure is built on the same basis as a bi-fold brochure but is folded in three sections with one section overlapping the other. Again these folds can be symmetrical or asymmetrical. This type of brochure is very popular for mailshots as it fits into a standard envelope when an A4 sheet is folded in this manner.
Z-fold Brochure Design
A z-fold or accordion brochure is a single sheet of paper, folded twice to produce the shape of a Z when looking at a cross section of the brochure. This layout can give great visual impact if viewing a single graphic that spans the entire width of all panels.
Gatefold Brochure Design
A gatefold brochure is typically a single sheet of paper, folded twice to allow for a large main or middle section with two half sized folds that cover the main or middle section
Other Brochure Designs
The variety of other such folds is vast and in most cases they use a combination or a variation of the basic types of folds. Using such folds can transform your brochure and allow more options for the graphic design elements.
Roll Fold and Double Parallel Fold Brochure
These brochure types employ an extra panel that can allow for more detailed information and graphic presentation than a typical DL structure yet still allow the finished artwork to be folded into a compact format.
French Fold
This slightly more unusual format can give expression to compact disc inlay cards for example, that expand to reveal a poster-style image whilst being a relatively simple printing process.
Half-fold then Tri-fold
Where a lot of information needs to be displayed but a small format retained makes this type of brochure very effective for projects such as map design that allow the information to be displayed on a single large panel but folded to a pocket-friendly size.
As your brochure increases in content you might decide to go towards a more conventional style brochure. The question often comes up "what type of brochure binding to use? Again there are a large variety of bindings available, but they mainly fall under three categories
Punch and Spiral Bound Brochures
Punch and spiral bound brochures can have many different variations including comb binding, and zip binding to name just a few. They will typically require holes to be punched into the paper with a mechanism to hold the pages in place. This can be a cost-effective way to present large amounts of data.
Saddle-Stitch Binding
This is a great way to present catalogues, magazines or manuals up to about 50 pages. The brochure is usually stapled to hold the pages intact and makes for an inexpensive yet robust binding solution.
Perfect Binding
To give extra quality to longer format work, over 50 pages, perfect binding is an ideal solution. It can be used for soft or hard-back publications using an array of gluing methods depending on the application. This is the preferred binding-style where the work needs to last and is suitable for bookshelf display due to the inclusion of a spine where the title and other information can be displayed.
When deciding on a brochure design for your product or service it is important to look at the finer details, like the brochure structure. This will help make your brochure stand out in the crowd. We at Renaissance Brochure Design Dublin are more than happy to discuss and help plan your next brochure design.
You can contact us on (01) 482 4687 or in our Dublin office.