Looking for a printer to help you with yearbook printing or sports book printing? Even though we live in a digital age, there is nothing like a yearbook or sports book to keep cherished school memories. We print lots of books at Publishing Xpress, but there is something very special about a school sports book or a yearbook.
Publishing Xpress is a great option for yearbook printing. We offer four binding styles (perfect bound, plastic coil, saddle stitch, and wire-o), and we have used all of them over the years for these types of books. We specialize in printing multi-page books, so we understand yearbook and sports book printing from top to bottom. Our online calculators can give you an instant quote on your printing project:
Tips for Your Yearbook Printing Project
If you’re in charge to preparing the school’s yearbook or sports book, you have your work cut out for you! These can be huge projects that require a lot of organization. Miss one child in a class and you have a very disappointed child! As you prepare the yearbook printing or sports book printing, keep these tips in mind:
Decide early on which binding option you want to use for your yearbook printing. The most popular options are perfect bound and saddle stitch, but we have also printed many plastic coil and wire-o books. On the three binding options other than saddle stitch, you will need to add an extra margin on the bound side of the book. We recommend 1/2 inch margin on the three sides that aren’t bound and 3/4 of an inch on the bound edge. With plastic coil and wire-o, that side is punched and you want to make sure that the text is not punched on that side. With perfect binding, part of that edge of the page will be caught in the spine. Large margins will ensure that there are no issues, but you need to be aware of this as you are designing.
More than most books, yearbooks and sports books have a large number of photos. Those photos, especially in sports books, can come from numerous sources, making it difficult to ensure that all photos looks similar. Some might be light, some might be dark. Some might be high resolutions, some might be low. Although it will take extra time, you should check every photo for the following: 1. Is the resolution at least 300 dpi? Even if you are starting with 300 dpi, if you enlarge the photo, you will reduce the resolution. 2. Take an overall look at the photo and determine if it needs to be lightened or darkened so that it looks similar to other photos in the book. 3. Make sure that the photo is in a CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) color format. If it is RGB (red-green-blue) color format, you will want to convert the photo yourself to CMYK. If you let the printing machines make the conversion, you may get unintended color shifts in the photos.
Be very careful of enlarging a photo across two pages in your yearbook printing project. You don’t want someone’s face and especially their eyes to be exactly in the middle of the two pages. With perfect binding, some of the face will get caught in the spine, distorting the person’s face. With plastic coil and wire-o binding, some of their face can get punched. Move the person’s face to the left or right of the center.
Many yearbooks and sports books have advertisements from sponsors, which brings on a whole host of problems. Even if you give the advertisers specific directions specifying the size of the advertisements and resolution of the ad, you are bound to get all kinds of weird things. Ads that are way too small or way too large and whose dimensions will never fit the allotted space. Pictures of advertisements that appeared somewhere else, with terrible resolution. Handwritten ads that you are supposed to magically turn into gorgeous ads. Sponsors turning in these atrocious ads well after the deadline. The best advice we can give is set a really early deadline for these ads, so you will have time to go back to the sponsors and get new ads if needed. Have some borders ready that go with the overall theme of your book. That way, if an ad doesn’t fill the space correctly, you can put a border behind the ad so there isn’t a lot of white space showing.
Send for our free sample package. We’ll send you samples of our four binding options, so you can see them first hand. In the plastic coil book, we have samples of all of our paper stocks to help you make selections for your book. Many clients find this package extremely helpful when deciding on options for their books.
We don’t offer lamination for saddle stitch books. But if you are getting perfect bound, plastic coil, or wire-o, consider laminating the covers of your yearbook printing project. This will add a little thickness to the cover as well as durability. Gloss lamination will make the colors on the cover really pop, while soft-touch lamination has a very velvety feel. If you send for our free sample package, the plastic coil book has a sample of gloss and soft-touch lamination.
Before you start designing, get yearbooks or sports books from other schools and review them. What do you like about these books? Do they have features that you weren’t considering but really like? What design elements to you like? Consider elements for your yearbook printing project.
Working with Publishing Xpress for Your Sports Book and Yearbook Printing Project
Getting a yearbook or sports book printed can be an overwhelming task. You may have a lot of questions about how to make sure it is printed correctly. We’re here to help and make sure the process is as smooth as possible. Or check out this article on 50 tips, tricks and ideas for creating school yearbooks.
Learn More About Yearbook Printing — Contact Us today!
Contact us to learn more about our yearbook and sports book capabilities. Or take a look at our other book printing ideas. We look forward to hearing from you!
