Catalogs

Two families of stock, and they are genuinely different purchases:

• Text and cover weights (60lb–100lb) are flexible sheets. Higher numbers are thicker; "text" bends like magazine paper, "cover" is closer to a light card.
• Card stocks (14PT–18PT) are measured in points of thickness. They are rigid — a 16PT sell sheet feels like a business card, not a flyer.
• Rule of thumb: volume hand-outs on text weights, premium leave-behinds and display pieces on card.

Spot UV is a high-gloss coating applied only where you choose — a logo, a product photo, a headline — while the rest of the sheet stays matte or uncoated. The contrast is what people run their thumb over.

It is available on sell sheets and rack cards, on the front, the back or both sides. Supply a separate spot-UV mask file marking the areas to gloss; our prepress team checks it before anything prints.

• Saddle stitch folds the sheets and staples through the spine. It lies flat when open, works from 8 pages, and is the economical choice for booklets and thin catalogs.
• Perfect binding glues the pages into a square printed spine, like a paperback. It needs at least 28 pages — below that there is nothing to glue — and looks the most retail on a shelf.

If your page count might grow past 52, perfect binding also runs higher — up to 92 pages.

Every bound piece is built from folded sheets, and one folded sheet is four pages. That is why booklets run 8, 12, 16 … and never 10 or 18.

On catalogs, the page count includes the cover: a "36 page" catalog is 32 inside pages plus the 4-page cover. Count your content pages, add four, and round up to the next multiple of four.