At Kaligraphic we print store quality books in a wide variety of formats, sizes and with multiple paper stock options. We work with independent authors and businesses of all kinds with our affordable design, printing, and finishing services. We also print reports, manuals, and workbooks with perfect binding, wire binding and perforation options. As a digital printer we can print small runs very quickly on demand! Whether you’re printing ten copies, or a thousand, we care about doing the job right and have decades of expertise to draw on. Come on in to view our samples and discuss which product is best for you!
We will assist you in ensuring that your designs are ready to print.
GSM refers to the density of the paper. Our papers range from 60gsm to 350gsm
250gsm-200gsm are a bit lighter and more flexible. They’re perfect for covers on books, magazines, manuals. They’re also appropriate for art prints, and posters.
60gsm is our lightest, but not thinnest stock. Available in Bulky Cream and Bulky Off-White, these stocks are perfect for novels, as you’d find in bookstores. They’re a lighter paper stock- but they’re thicker and not a bright white, ensuring a comfortable reading experience.
If you’re not sure what you need, you’re welcome to come in and have a look at our materials and samples. If you’re unable to come in, we can also talk you through your options on the phone or via email. Feel free to ask us questions!
We have a number of binding options.
Perfect Binding:
We can perfect bind books up to 300x300mm in size, and down to A6 (105x148mm). Perfect binding is how paperbacks you see in bookstores are bound.
Coil/Wire Binding:
We can coil bind books with up to a 300mm long spine, and down to A6(105x148mm). Coil binding is often seen with spiral notebooks and workbooks.
Saddle Stitching:
We can saddle stitch booklets up to A4 portrait size, and down to A6(105x148mm). Saddle stitching creates stapled booklets. Due to the way these are made- the booklets have to have pages in multiples of 4.
To saddle stitch in larger sizes than stated above, we require more time to complete the order.
Celloglazing is the application of a plastic finish to paper products. Magazine covers, for example, are usually finished with a gloss celloglaze, while many novel covers will use a matt finish.
We offer gloss celloglazing, matt celloglazing, matt velvet celloglazing, linen celloglazing and leather celloglazing. These finishes can be applied to book covers to give your product a little extra luxury and durability.
We offer inexpensive digital foiling. This is an affordable new way to create reflective metallic finishes, without spending thousands on letterpress foiling techniques.
Full range of foil colours:
At Kaligraphic Print, every book we produce is trimmed, as the last stage of the production process. To ensure this is neat and clean, with no strange slivers of white at the edges of pages, we require all files with some kind of background that goes to the edges of the images to have a minimum of 3mm of bleed. Bleed means that when you design the product, the background must extend 3mm outside of the actual product size.
You can set this up very easily with all professional design programs. When opening a new document, in the document set up settings, there will be a section that refers to Bleed, with a box in which you can set the amount you need. For Kaligraphic, we prefer 3-5mm, if you forget at this point, you can always go to File > Document Setup and fix it there. If you’re not using Adobe programs, it may also be in settings for layout, or printing.
When your new file opens you will see a blank page, but around it, 3mm away from the page boundaries, there will be a red or dotted line bordering the page. This is your bleed limit, and your backgrounds and graphics that go outside of the page boundaries must also reach this bleed limit.
When you have finished your design, it is also important that you include this bleed in the export process. In your export settings, there will be options to turn on crop or trim marks, which you need to select, and also it will allow you to set the bleed limit. In Adobe programs it will have a box you can check to ‘Use Document Bleed Settings’, which will automatically set it to your initial bleed set up. If you decide that even though you’ve set it to 5mm, you only need 3, you can uncheck this box and put in 3mm instead.
In Adobe settings this will be under the Marks and Bleed tab.
For books featuring images and backgrounds going to the edge of the pages within the text of the book, the same requirements and settings apply.
At Kaligraphic Print, we do inexpensive foiling, and a range of celloglazed finishes. Due to how foiling works, this can be a complicated process or a very simple one. To foil elements on a printed design, we must print those elements in black, and then run the sheet through our celloglazing and foiling machine. The foil then sticks to the printed areas cleanly and permanently.
If you’re having foiled shapes and text on a white background– this is a simple two step process:
If you want foiled shapes that overlap a background, or other background elements that aren’t foiled, this becomes a four step process:
For designs where you have printed areas, and foiled areas, but they don’t touch or overlap on a white background, you can eliminate the need for celloglazing by using this 3 step process:
Due to this process, the document set up when you wish to include foiling is also different. In order to foil correctly we require your design to come in two separate pages. One page must be the non-foiled elements only. The other page must be the foiled elements only, in black, regardless of which colour foil you have ordered.
Foiling works best on bulkier fonts, simply because the end result can be a little tricky to read, and the bulkier it is, the clearer the words are. We do not recommend it for paragraphs of text, or thin lines that must be perfectly aligned.
In mass production, things can get out of alignment by a millimeter or two quite easily, and if your line is only a millimeter wide and is out of place- this can be very obvious- while we are always watchful for when this occurs, the more margin for error in a complicated 4 step process like foiling is best. For example- if you have foiled lines of 0.5mm to border a black square on a white background, if the machine shifts a page 0.3mm in one direction, suddenly the border of the square is noticeably out of place. When this kind of mistake is made, the two printing, and one celloglazing layer that came before on this page have now gone to waste. And if this happens in 1 out of 5 pages, of a 100 page order, this results in 20 wasted pages of ink and celloglaze. Had the border line been 1mm or 2mm thick- this slight misalignment would have caused no issues. So keep in mind that we require a certain amount of margin for error to avoid waste and delay in completing your order.
If you have any questions about this or any other kind of file set up feel free to email our Graphic Designer, Mel, at graphics@kaligraphic.com.au, and she will assist you!