Folding techniques
In the first of hopefully many articles we would like to offer you a resource for terminology used in the design/printing industry. The first subject we will touch on is folding. There are many techniques to fold paper for use in flyers, leaflets, brochures – in fact, anything that is printed may be folded in some way. Below are some of the common terms for these various methods:
Binding techniques
In the second of our technical/terminology articles we touch on binding techniques. There are many techniques to bind paper together in pamphlet/brochure/book form. Below are some of the common terms for these various methods; there isn’t a standardised title for each of them – printers do refer to them by different names – but here are the terms we use:
Finishing techniques
The third technical/terminology article. Once your sheet is printed there are many other techniques you can specify to add to the design/improve the functionality. Below are some of the common terms for these various methods:
Page design terminology
The fourth of our technical/terminology articles. When you lay out a page in a DTP (desktop publishing) program, there are certain areas of the page you need to be aware of. Below are some of the common terms used:
ISO paper sizes
The fifth of our technical/terminology articles.
Over time there have been many standard sizes of paper used across the world, but today these have been distilled down to just two, ISO 216 (A4, A3 etc) and the North American sizes officially only still used in the USA and Canada.
ISO 216 evolved from the German DIN 476 standard for paper sizes. and these are based in a single aspect ratio of square root of two. The base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series – A1, A2, A3, and so forth – are defined by halving the preceding paper size along the larger dimension; therefore if you cut an A0 sheet in half you get two sheets of A1, and so on. This aspect ratio is especially convenient for a paper size, as each size has the same width/height ratio, which allows the easy scaling of work.
Typography terminology
The sixth of our technical/terminology articles. Below are some of the common terms used:
Typeface/Fonts
A typeface is a family of fonts. This may be made up of one weight or many, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a co-ordinated set of glyphs. A typeface, in its basic form, is an alphabet of letters, numerals and punctuation marks (how many depends on the designer); it can also include ideograms and other symbols (for example, mathematical or map-making symbols). The term typeface is frequently interchanged with font; these terms had more clearly differentiated meanings before the advent of computers. The distinction between font and typeface is that a font designates a specific member of a type family such as roman, boldface or italic, while typeface designates a consistent visual appearance or style which can be a “family” of fonts. In the example below we see the typeface Hermes, which is made up of four fonts: black, bold, regular and thin.
