From the course: Designing a Brochure

Calculating the size of the panels - InDesign Tutorial

From the course: Designing a Brochure

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Calculating the size of the panels

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- [Narrator] Let's turn our attention to the folding of our brochure. This interactive page at foldfactory.com animates some typical brochure folds, and we'll be using this one, a roll fold. We're going to be designing a roll fold brochure at a flat size of eight and a half by 14 inches, a standard legal size sheet. If we divide 14 by four, we have a panel width of three and a half inches, but because folding is dimensional, if panel one is to fold into panel two and lie flat panel one must be slightly smaller. This is called folding compensation. And the best way to understand this is to take a sheet of paper and make a four panel roll fold dummy. Divide the sheet into four equal panels, fold the right most panel in, fold it in again and close the cover. You'll see that it doesn't sit flat. So what we need is folding compensation. Thankfully, there are a number of online folding calculators that will calculate the exact size of the panels. I'm going to use one at Holland Litho. Holland Litho in Michigan. And if I come to the tools menu on their website, and then I can choose folding calculator. What I'm after is a roll fold. And then we specify what type of paper we're going to be using. We are going to be using cover as opposed to text, and we specify the width and the height. Now we have the option to specify this in inches, pikers and points. And since the page size is in inches, that's what I'm going to use. Apologies to those of you in Europe, who would prefer to use millimeters. That's not available. I know, I know that inches are an incredibly arcane and unwieldy measurement system to work with, but I'm just going to go with it here. So 14 by eight and a half. And importantly, I need to say that that is the flat size. And then as if by magic it gives us the exact size of the panels that we need on the inside spread and on the outer spread and the position at which we need to place our guides. So I'm going to take a screenshot of that. Although we can't have this sent to us by email, I'm just going to take a screenshot and then I'm going to place that screenshot in the InDesign document. Now, just before we go on, a couple of more considerations that I need to mention. If you're designing a brochure for a client your choice of paper is an important design decision. How well will the paper hold the photographs? How much does it weigh? What's its opacity. And of course, how much does it cost? So be sure to consult your commercial printer about the papers they have available and ask to see samples of the paper that you intend to use. That's a very important point. You need to see and handle the paper that you intend to use. And lastly, if you're designing a self mailing piece your folding style will require wafer seals or glue to make it mail ready. Here's a website with useful information about the US postal service mailing guidelines.

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