Bindery and Finishing

Everything that happens after the press

Bindery and finishing is the work between a printed sheet and a finished piece: cutting, folding, binding, foil, embossing and die cutting. It is regularly the part of a schedule that people forget to budget time for, and it can take as long as the printing did.

All of it runs in our own building. That matters because the alternative is trucking a job to an outside trade finisher and back, which adds days, adds a handoff, and puts the most delicate stage of the job in someone else’s queue.

Cutting and folding

Guillotine cutting

Perfectly cut edges and corners from our guillotine cutter. It separates pages, removes excess and trims sheets down to the exact finished size. Because it cuts a whole lift at once there is a small tolerance to it, which is the entire reason artwork needs bleed.

Folding and scoring

To save time and money, multiple pages are printed on one large sheet and then folded down to the finished size. Heavier stocks are scored first so the fibre bends instead of cracking along the fold, which is what separates a clean crease from a broken one.

Binding

We bind in house across the common methods, and which one suits depends on page count, how the piece has to open and how long it needs to survive.

• Saddle stitching. Folded and stapled through the spine. Cheapest and best for lower page counts. Page count must be a multiple of four.
• Perfect binding. Pages glued into a flat printable spine. The right answer once a book is thick enough to carry a spine and needs to look like a book.
• Coil, wire and comb. Lays flat when open, which is what manuals, cookbooks and workbooks actually need.

Decorative finishing

Foil stamping

We make high quality dies to transfer foil onto the sheet under heat and pressure. Foil is not printed ink, which is why it catches light the way it does and why it cannot be simulated on press.

Die cutting

A die is a razor-sharp cutter formed into a specific shape and used to cut paper, cardstock and board into outlines a guillotine cannot produce. It is how folding cartons, tags, folders and contour-cut signage are made. Full detail in what is die cutting.

Embossing and coatings

Embossing raises an area of the sheet and debossing recesses it, both adding a tactile cue you feel before you read. Spot UV, soft-touch and matte or gloss coatings do similar work with texture. All of it is priced on top of the base print and all of it adds a pass, so it lengthens a schedule as well as a quote.