Saddle stitching uses wires resembling staples to hold the folded pages together. Sections are folded and then wires are driven through the centrefold. It is the most economical style of binding and here at Newman Thomson we have three saddle stitching machines producing hundreds of publications a month.
Saddle stitching is suitable for almost any bound publication, especially where cost is a consideration. Many magazines have a cover that is the same weight material as the text (“self-cover”), and most stitched brochures will have a heavier cover which gives a more robust finished product. One limitation is the number of pages – as the wire is driven through the paper, there is a limit to how many pages can be bound, depending on the thickness of the paper – we’d tend to recommend perfect binding or one of it’s variations for publications thicker than this.
How to set up your artwork
[See our artwork guideline checklist for full details]
All the usual print ready PDF settings apply, but with saddle stitching there’s only one other point to consider – creep. As sections are inserted within each other, the cumulative thickness of the pages will cause the edge of the inner sections to be pushed out beyond the edges of the outer sections. As the booklets are trimmed when they’re closed to give a neat finish, the result is that the inner most pages will be very slightly smaller than the outermost pages, and content can appear to “creep” over to the right as you go through the booklet. Artwork can be set up to counter this movement, but our imposition software can handle this automatically.