How much margin should I use in my layout?

Designing books and magazines is an art itself, one which is often hard to master when you’re taking your publication from pixels to print. Luckily, if you’re using Peecho you don’t have to worry too much about standardisation and print-ready components, but there are still a number of things to consider if you want to get the most out of your print product.

Cover

With cover we mean: the front cover, the inside of the front cover, the inside of the back cover, and the back cover page. Usually, these are the first and last couple of pages of your document.

For the cover of the product, we advise to leave at least 1 cm of free space alongside the borders of your page. By free space, we mean that there should be no text, but instead just whitespace, an image or any background color. Within the inside of the cover, it is best to leave more free space (approximately 2 cm) near the spine. This is where the pages with the content will be glued.

Contents

With ‘inside’ we mean: all remaining pages (content) of your product. To make sure your document will be printed as expected, we advise you to leave at least 1 cm clear space near the borders of your document.

If you really want to make it look good, it is best to add more space near the spine than on the outside of a page, to compensate for the glue area and the fold.

If you use image spreads across two pages, it is advisable to use overlap near the spine: so, every page should have a little of the photo of the other page on the inside. This prevents that parts of your photo will not be shown due to the fold in the middle. This is just how you would lay out a magazine or photo book in the old days.