Binding
From coils to stitches to staples and screws, the methods are as interesting as they are varied.
Keep It Together.
Binding, is the process of assembling and securing written or printed pages within a cover to create a booklet or book.
Popular binding methods include:
- Saddle Stitching: The most common and least expensive binding method where folded sheets are placed over a ‘saddle’ and held together by wire staples driven through the crease of the fold. Applications: programs, booklets, newsletters, pamphlets with a low page count.
- Spiral Coil: Plastic or metal coil is looped through small holes or slots punched along the binding edge, allowing the book to lie completely flat when opened. Applications: reports, sales presentations, proposals, directories, cookbooks, maintenance guides.
- Wire Binding: Individual sheets are stacked together and holes are punched along the binding edge. A “C” shaped wire is pushed into the holes and pinched together to create a circle.
- Side Stitching: Folded signatures or cut sheets stapled along the side of the spine of the book from front to back.
- Perfect Bound: Cover and interior pages are glued together at the spine with strong, flexible glue, forming a square spine. Then the three open sides of the book are trimmed to give them sharp clean edges. Produces a professional finished appearance for soft cover books, manuals, catalogs and thicker brochures.
- Case Bound: Book pages are either perfect bound or sewn together first, then placed into a case consisting of board covered with paper, cloth or another substrate.
- Smyth Sewn: A method of sewing together folded, gathered and collated signatures with thread through the folds of the individual signatures.
- Singer Sewn: Pages are sewn together with the help of a Singer sewing machine, through the spine or on the side of a book, similar to side stitching.
- Screw Bound (Chicago Screw): Holes are drilled into the pages and cover of a book block, and aluminum screw posts are tightened to hold the pages together.
