Magazine Print Production: From Final Layout to Press

What to take away

Start with the printer's spec sheet

Ask for the file guide in writing, dated, and attach it to the job. Published guides show how much varies between printers. These come from three printers' own help pages for booklet and magazine work.

None of these is a general rule. A different printer, press or stock may set different numbers, and the sheet you are given wins. Record, besides the table: trim size, binding, finishing, paper make and thickness, printing condition, proof type, approvers and the last day for technical changes. Tie these to the flatplan so page count and sections are fixed before export. Paper and binding choices are covered in paper, print and binding options.

Bleed, safe area, spine and binding

Bleed and safe area. Tradeprint tells designers to extend anything that touches the edge 3 mm beyond trim, and to keep a gap of at least 5 mm to the edge in saddle-stitched work, because pages nearer the centre lose more at the trim. Tradeprint defines creep as inner pages sticking out further than outer ones; it says creep is usually not an issue under 40 pages, and larger booklets need margin adjustments.

Perfect-bound covers. Cloudprinter and Tradeprint both leave a strip of the inside cover unprinted at the spine. Cloudprinter says 3 mm along the spine, where the glue is applied; Tradeprint says a non-printable margin of 5 mm on either side of it. The difference is why you should use the printer's own template. For images that cross the gutter, Tradeprint suggests shifting content on inner pages outwards by 3 mm, with the facing pages moved in opposite directions. RADIX, in its perfect-bound guidance, advises larger inner margins than outer margins, and keeps bleed 1/32 in from the bind edge to improve glue adhesion.

Spine width. The formula in a US printer's FAQ for perfect-bound notebooks (4over4) is (interior page count divided by 2) times the paper thickness, using the exact caliper of the stock and confirming the result with the printer before the cover template is locked. Tradeprint calculates it in its product-page tool from size, page count, stock and lamination. Illustration of the arithmetic only, not a stock value: a 96-page text block is 48 leaves, and at 0.1 mm per leaf it is 4.8 mm before any cover allowance. Take the real thickness from the mill's data or a physical dummy.

Supplying the files. Tradeprint asks for a perfect-bound book as two PDFs: a cover file with outer and inside cover as spreads including the spine, and a multi-page inner file. Its worked example is an 80-page book, where the cover PDF has pages 80 and 1 as one spread and pages 2 and 79 as another, and the inner file holds pages 3 to 78. Layout rules for margins and crossovers start in the layout and typography guide.

Export to PDF/X

PDF/X is a family of ISO standards, ISO 15930, for prepress data exchange. The Library of Congress's format description sets out the versions:

For blind exchange, a PDF/X file must have all fonts and images embedded, explicit print and trim boxes, explicit trapping status, and an OutputIntent with the colour space definition embedded. Export with the printer's job options, not a preset remembered from another job, and give each export a version and date.

Preflight with a checklist

Run preflight against the printer's profile, then inspect the pages by eye. The Ghent Workgroup (GWG), an industry body, released GWG 2022 on 30 March 2022 as its first major specification since 2015, as a freely available spreadsheet. It says one aim is fewer false positives, meaning reported errors that would never cause a production problem. Its Ghent PDF Output Suite 5.0 provides test patches for checking whether a PDF workflow behaves as expected, including patches for ICC-based objects allowed in PDF/X-4.

Editorial suggestion: give every export a new number and read every warning, not just the green summary. Faults that survive preflight are listed in magazine print production problems.

Colour management and what each proof approves

Ask the printer to name the printing condition. ECI, the European Color Initiative, lists the ISO 12647-2:2013 conditions. FOGRA51 (PSO Coated v3) is Printing Condition 1, premium coated paper. FOGRA52 (PSO Uncoated v3) is Printing Condition 5, wood-free uncoated white paper. For heat-set web offset on super-calendered SC-B paper, ECI offers a profile based on FOGRA54. In the US, Idealliance explains that SWOP (Specification for Web Offset Publications) came out of a 1974 meeting of industry experts, that the GRACoL committee (sheet-fed work) was formed in 1996, and that GRACoL 2013 was introduced to accommodate papers with optical brightening agents.

Editorial suggestion, drawn from the points above:

A contract proof has a defined meaning. Fogra's Contract Proof Creation certification relates to ISO 12647-7, and asks for the Fogra MediaWedge V3.0 on the test print, with a human-readable comment line stating the conformance level, file name, proofing system, substrate, printing condition, time and date, and measurement condition (M0, M1 or M2). The Ugra/Fogra Media Wedge CMYK V3.0 has 72 patches, each with a target value from ISO 12647. Editorial suggestion: ask the proofer for the measured report and compare it with the agreed target. ECI says its Media Standard Print 2016 explains the colour measurement conditions M0 to M3 and the colour deviation formula dE'00.

Editorial suggestion: label each proof with what it is for, because an editor signing off copy has not signed off colour. Agree the viewing light with the printer before a press check. Idealliance describes D50 as a theoretical light source approximating warm daylight, on which the M1 measurement mode is based.

Close with a job sheet

Editorial suggestion: send one page with every release and keep it with the issue.

After sending, ask the printer to confirm receipt and processing, and to report warnings. Archive the sent files, proofs, correction log and a finished copy. The wider release routine is in the editorial release checklist.

Sources