If you’ve ever been with me in a room whilst critiquing a piece of print that someone’s had done then no doubt one of the issues you will have seen me pick up on would be the fold of an item!
So many times items are incorrectly or badly folded and it affects customers preconception about that business.
Lets take for example a price list. If your business has a high quality design and prices that back this up. Why would you have a printed price list that is poorly folded and cracked all down those folds?
You see, for items that are printed on a stock of 170gsm or higher (& most importantly coated stocks) there needs to be a crease on those folds, this helps to ease the strain on the fibres of the paper and allow it to fold a little easier. Without this, the fibres will be prone to splitting and cracking, if you have ink across these folds it’s ever more apparent!
Creasing isn’t to be confused with scoring – scoring is when a line is drawn across the printed item – breaking the fibres. Creasing is simply extending the fibres allowing them to move a little further. It won’t fully remove the chance of cracking (to do this, think about laminating your item) but it helps A LOT!
I won’t go into all the technical aspects of why creasing or cracking happens (let’s face it you’re not really interested in that) – you just want to know the single piece of information which is…. When producing a high quality folded print – make sure your items are creased!
