How To Design a Booklet

Everyday we have customers asking us how to design a booklet.

Whether you’re designing a booklet to use as a piece of promotional material or as a type of training manual, there are three tools you might use to design your booklet:

• Adobe InDesign
• Microsoft Word, and
• Canva

Each has its advantages and disadvantages for designing booklets. However, if you’re trying to figure out how to design a booklet on your own, using one of these programs will be of great use to you.

How do I design a booklet?

Generally, the design of a booklet is the first thing you work on, aside from the actual content that goes inside the booklet. Once you have an idea for a booklet design, you then determine where the booklet content will come from and what it will look like. This is all part of the booklet design portion of your project.

Once you’ve settled on the booklet content and overall booklet structure, you’ll need to choose a type of booklet binding. The type of booklet binding that you choose is a key factor in how you will layout your booklet design. To that point, make sure to download the free booklet templates on the product page at Printivity!

How to make a booklet, step by step

The whole job comes down to five decisions, with the order of those decisions being critical to your success. Make them out of order and you’ll redo work you thought was finished.

• Settle the page count and the finished size before you do anything else. Every decision after this one depends on these two, so changing either one later means starting the layout over.
• Choose the binding next. The binding decides how your pages get arranged on press, how the spine behaves, and how the finished piece opens and sits on a desk.
• Build the layout in reading order, one page at a time. Your printer rearranges pages for the press through a process called imposition, so there’s no reason to work out printer spreads yourself.
• Place images at full resolution and keep live text away from the trim edge. A photo that looks sharp on your laptop is often nowhere near the resolution that print requires. Also, anything sitting too close to the trim line risks getting cut off when the sheets are trimmed.
• Export a single PDF with bleed and crop marks. The export section below covers exactly what your printer needs to see, so you won’t have to sort through settings twice.

Booklet sizes and how to choose one

The finished size comes next, centering on two things: how many pages you have and how the booklet gets used. Settle on the size before you start laying out pages. It determines your margins, your image dimensions, and what your printer can run efficiently, so changing it later means reworking everything that came after it.

A 5.5 x 8.5 inch booklet is the go-to for pocket guides, event programs, and anything a reader will hold in one hand. Meanwhile, an 8.5 x 11 inch booklet gives you room for catalogs, training manuals, and layouts with full-width images or dense text. Larger formats suit lookbooks and photography, where the visuals need space to land.

What most people don’t realize is that the finished size is half the flat sheet, folded. A saddle stitch booklet will print two pages on each side of a single sheet, so the finished dimensions depend on the sheet your printer stocks. That’s why a standard size like 5.5 x 8.5 or 8.5 x 11 costs less than something unusual, and why it’s worth picking one of them unless your project genuinely calls for a custom format.

Three programs to design your booklet

As we said, people usually use one of three programs to design a booklet page layout:

• Microsoft Word
• Adobe InDesign, and
• Canva

The complexity of the booklet page design, as well as your familiarity with each program, will determine which one you choose.

Here’s a quick guide for designing a booklet with Microsoft Word that is pretty easy to follow. Microsoft Word is a great program to use for simple designs that contain mostly text. Since Word was created as a word processing program, it does not have as many tools for complex designs. However, for simple projects or designers with little experience, it will get the job done!

For designers with more experience, use this guide for help designing a booklet in Adobe InDesign. Take advantage of every feature offered and you can create a beautiful booklet.

Canva also works well for a booklet. Its templates handle layout and page order for someone who doesn’t design for a living, and you can build a complete booklet in the browser without installing anything.

Where people stumble is the handoff to print. Canva works in RGB and converts colors on export, so what you see on screen can shift once it hits paper. Bleed and crop mark controls are limited on the free tier. Also, stock images dropped in at screen resolution look fine on a laptop but print soft, while custom images uploaded at full resolution hold up the way you’d expect.

Thankfully, none of that is a dealbreaker. A Canva booklet prints well when you take a few minutes to check the export settings before sending the file. Of course, we check every file before it goes on press, so if something isn’t right, you’ll hear about it before it costs you a run. 

If you are looking for other programs with similar abilities as these three, we’ve compiled a list of highly-rated free and paid graphic design programs. 

How to export a print ready PDF

Exporting is where most booklet files fall apart. The good news is that there are only five settings that you really need to focus on.

●  Bleed: extend your artwork an eighth of an inch past the trim on every edge where color or an image runs to the edge. Without it, small shifts during cutting leave white slivers along the finished piece.

●  Color: convert to CMYK before you export. Leaving the conversion to the press means the press decides what your colors look like.

●  Resolution: keep images at 300 DPI at final size. What looks sharp on screen is often 72 DPI, and 72 DPI falls apart on paper.

●  Fonts: embed every font in the PDF, or convert the type to outlines. If a font is missing, the printer’s system substitutes one, and the substitution never looks right.

●  Pages: export single pages, not spreads, unless your printer has specifically asked for spreads.

When a file shows up with something wrong, a printer either stops the job and calls you or prints exactly what you sent. Yes, either outcome costs you time. However, on an offset printing run, it also costs you the plate setup, which is money you don’t get back. Five settings checked before you hit export is cheaper than one setting fixed after.

Contact us to print your booklets!

If you want an elaborate design that Microsoft Word can’t give you and you aren’t experienced with Indesign or Canva, talk to Printivity. We have in-house designers that will listen to your vision and bring it to life. Our designers will work with you every step of the way to make your dream print a reality!

Once your booklet’s design is finished, check out our booklet printing page to get your booklet printed. Save yourself from the hassle of perfecting colors, binding, printing a booklet, and cutting your booklet by having a professional print your booklet pages!

Contact Printivity at 1-877-649-5463 once you have your booklet project designed and we’ll get your project printed right away.

Don’t have time to design your booklet? Printivity has you covered! We offer graphic design services to help you get your designs ready and printed quickly.

FAQ: How to Design a Booklet

What size should I make my booklet?

The right booklet size depends on your page count and where the booklet will be read. Common booklet sizes run from a 5.5 x 8.5 inch mini booklet up to 8.5 x 11 inches. Pick the size before you start laying out pages, because it sets your margins, your image dimensions, and what your printer can run economically.

Do booklet page counts have to be multiples of four?

Yes for saddle stitch booklets, page counts have to be multiples of four, mainly because every folded sheet produces four pages. Other binding types are more forgiving, so the constraint comes from how you’re binding rather than from the design itself. If you’re not sure how many pages you’ll end up with, see our guide to counting booklet pages.

Can I design a booklet in Canva for professional printing?

Yes, you can design a booklet in Canva and send the file to a professional printer. Canva is a fine place to learn how to create a booklet, and its templates handle layout and page order for you. The catch is print setup. Canva defaults to RGB and limits bleed control on its free tier, so upload high quality images and check your export settings before the file leaves your hands.

Should booklet pages be designed in reading order or printer spreads?

Design your booklet in reading order, one page at a time, with page numbers running sequentially. The press rearranges your pages into printer spreads through a step called imposition, so building spreads yourself usually creates problems rather than solving them. Our guide to booklet page order walks through the correct order in detail.

How much bleed should I add to a booklet design?

Add bleed to every edge of your booklet design where color or images run to the trim line, usually an eighth of an inch. Without it, the small shifts that happen during cutting leave thin white slivers along the edge of the finished piece. For setup in each program, see our guide to designing bleeds.

How many pages can a booklet have?

How many pages a booklet can have depends on the binding rather than on the booklet itself. Our square saddle binding takes booklets from 68 pages up to 144, and standard saddle stitch covers smaller counts in multiples of four. Past that, spiral binding will lay flat on a desk and handles almost any page count, while perfect binding gives you a square spine you can print on.

Should I order a physical proof before printing a booklet?

Yes, order a physical proof of your booklet any time color accuracy or paper feel matters. A PDF on a backlit screen never matches ink on paper, and a printed proof is the only way to see how your images sit on the stock you chose. For a reprint of something you’ve already run, it’s usually safe to skip.

How should I export a booklet for professional printing?

Export your booklet for professional printing as a single PDF with bleed included, crop marks on, and all fonts embedded. Convert your colors to CMYK and keep images at 300 DPI at final size rather than at screen resolution. Send single pages instead of spreads, unless your printer has asked for spreads.