Types of Binding for Leaflets & Printed Marketing Materials
When you create leaflets, reports, or booklets for your company, here are a variety of binding types from which you can choose. Which one is best for you? The answer depends on the type of document you’re creating. Here are a few tips to help you choose the perfect binding.
Wire Binding
The first type of binding we’d like to talk about is wire binding. This style is a “punch and bind” style (similar to a spiral notebook), which means it uses wires to bind together documents that have gone through a hole punch. To wire bind a report or leaflet, printers punch a series of holes down the left side of the pages and thread two wires through the holes.
When To Use It
Thanks to that sleek, metal wire, wire-bound documents have a very professional look. This makes them popular for marketing materials that go to colleagues or business contacts, such as case studies or corporate capabilities brochures.
Wire binding is also very forgiving; with this binding type, a booklet or leaflet can lay completely flat and the pages can rotate 360 degrees. This makes it a great choice for documents that need to be easy to read, such as an instruction manual. Of course, no matter what type of document you create, wire binding is an easy way to make it look highly professional.
Comb Binding
Comb binding, like wire binding, is another “punch and bind” style that’s very popular in the business world. Instead of a metal wire to bind together the pages, comb binding uses round plastic spines to hold everything in place. This binding results in a document that will hold together well, but is still able to lay flat like a wire-bound leaflet.
When To Use It
The plastic spines used in comb binding tend to be stronger than wire, which makes this type of binding ideal for larger booklets and leaflets. If your leaflet, report, or other document is 500 pages or more, you might want to consider comb binding (though of course, you can use it for smaller documents as well).
Comb binding is also particularly useful if you’re planning to send your document through the mail. The plastic comb is crush resistant, which means it will hold its shape and still work perfectly once it arrives — no matter how badly the postman handled it.
Saddle Stitching
The punch and bind type of binding is a great choice for people who are creating large documents… but what about those leaflets that are smaller in size?
If your booklet is only a few pages (a newsletter, for example), you can get away with a simpler type of binding known as saddle stitching. To saddle stitch a document, you simply fold the pages in half and staple them together along the spine. Just like that, you have a beautiful booklet!
When To Use It
Saddle stitching is one of the easiest ways to bind a leaflet or booklet. In fact, you can use this method to bind your booklets right at home! However, this binding is best for small documents (just a few pages). This will keep all your pages bound together without making the leaflet too bulky.
Perfect Book Binding
If you want your leaflet to really stand out from the rest, book binding just might be the way to do it. Book binding — or perfect binding, as it’s also called — uses an adhesive resin to attach a paper cover to your printed pages. The result is something that looks similar to a paperback book, with a square spine and a cover made from cardstock or some other heavy paper.
When To Use It
Perfect binding is a great choice for documents you’d like to save and refer to at a later date. Annual company reports, promotional brochures you use for regular presentations at trade shows, or company directories are all great examples of books that should be perfect bound.
However, remember that book binding is a more permanent method that comb binding or saddle stitching. Once you’ve spread that adhesive and lay down a cover, it is very difficult (even impossible) to add new pages to your booklet. If you decide to perfect bind your leaflets, make sure they are perfect already!
Get Perfect Leaflets Every Time
Every time you create a leaflet, brochure, or other printed marketing material, you need that document to be the best it can be. And at Banana Print, we strive to deliver the best prints for every project! Contact us today to place an order for your next prints; we promise that they’ll be perfect — whichever binding you choose.