November 2007- Perfect Binding Blends Classic Style with Economy

When you need a user-friendly, durable binding solution that offers a familiar look without breaking the bank, perfect binding is the answer. Ideal for a wide variety of products such as annual reports, textbooks, manuals and reference materials, perfect binding meets at the crossroad of functionality and value.

Perfect binding allows for plenty of design creativity to make your book unique and attractive.

In perfect binding, hot melt adhesive glue is used to attach the spine edge of the books pages to the book cover. Hinge scores are optional. Perfect binding allows for plenty of design creativity to make your book unique and attractive. With advance planning, it’s easy to add features like die-cuts, foldouts and gatefolds into your cover designs. Try foil stamping, embossing or debossing to add a touch of elegance and flair.

A few planning pointers can help smooth the binding process and keep you on the right track.

• Keep text and cover grain direction parallel to the spine – This ensures page-pull strength and prevents spine cracking or waviness.

• Add collating marks to your signature spines – Collating marks allow  binder operators to quickly and easily identify the proper sequence of signatures, reducing the chance of misloaded pockets.

• Take care with crossover images –Allow an additional 1/16” from the spine beyond the standard 1/8” grind-off margin, so images will meet at the spine. With careful planning perfect binding works for projects even with dozens of photos running across the gutter. Text stock and page counts can also affect crossovers image positions, so call in advance for assistance when planning crossovers.

• Perforate the backbone of signatures – Perforations on the spines of these signatures can allow air to escape during folding and when perfect binding clamps are applied prior to the spine grinding process. This helps folding accuracy and decreases wrinkles. Keep in mind that these perforations should not compromise the strength of the folded signature. If the signature breaks open when bent, it won't be strong enough to run on an automated machine. This could result in signatures not being able to feed in the pockets of the binder and having to be collated by hand as well as increased spoilage.

• Include adequate glue traps – Design your cover to have at least 1/16” glue trap margin at the head and foot. This will prevent excess glue from seeping out and making a mess. The covers should be long enough to overhang an untrimmed signature head to foot.

• Seal the deal – To ensure longevity and enhance the overall appearance of your perfect bound books, whenever possible, protect your covers with some form of coating, such as a film lamination.  Coating protection is especially important when heavy ink coverage is on one cover such as the front and the other has little or no copy on the back.

• Shrink wrap books for transit – Shrink wrapping protects books from scuffing and marking during shipping.

These are just some of the considerations for perfect bound book production. As with all projects, make sure to include your friends at Muscle Bound early in the planning process for the best results.

The Muscle Bound Advantage
Muscle Bound offers a wide range of binding solutions including layflat Otabind, case binding, library binding and, of course, high-quality perfect binding. We also provide folding, shrink wrapping, laminating and much more. With a binding style for every application, we are poised to meet your needs. Call us to discuss your next binding project.