What is a Booklet? Tips for How to Design a Booklet

As a business owner or marketer, you hear the word booklet thrown around a lot. You know it’s a print marketing asset, but what is a booklet really? And how do you design one that’s effective?

The beauty of booklets is that they can be whatever you need them to be. From event programs to lookbooks, manuals and annual reports, they’re customizable for any branding intent or promotional campaign. To help you create your own, we’ll clarify what booklets are, how they differ from books, standard length and size and offer need-to-know design tips.

Explore Smartpress’ custom booklet formats.

A booklet is a bound publication generally printed with a relatively small number of interior pages and a paper cover. When you print booklets with Smartpress, you get to choose from four binding options:

• Perfect bound: The cover and pages are cut to line up exactly, creating a seamless square spine.
• Saddle stitch: Pages are laid together and stapled through the fold line.
• Spiral coil: A durable plastic coil runs through drill holes in the cover and pages, ensuring the pages fully rotate and lay flat.
• Wire coil: A sturdy metal coil runs through drill holes in the cover and pages, allowing the book to lay flat and pages fully rotate.

The content that’s included in your booklet depends on your intent or goal for it. If your booklet is for marketing purposes, that information can be product details and service specs. If it’s for branding, you’ll want to include your company’s mission and values. If it’s a training manual, you’ll include instructions for learning tasks and so on.

When you ask yourself what is a booklet, it’s important to clarify that it differs from a book. You may think they’re interchangeable, but from a marketing standpoint, they really aren’t. The booklet vs. book debate comes down to physical characteristics like size and page count, as well as the content itself.

Books generally contain higher page counts than booklets, and depending on if you’re printing hardcover books or paperback books, their size can vary widely from standard booklets. As for content, while booklets are often created for marketing purposes, books tend to be the format for fiction and nonfiction narratives.

See how hardcover books can be used for more than storytelling.

The length of your booklet will depend on how you plan to use it. So how long is a booklet typically? For marketing and promotion, booklets generally have a smaller page count, with a minimum of eight pages and a maximum around 48. Event programs fall into this page count range, too, depending on the information you want to include.

The biggest things to consider is the intent of your booklet and its binding. As long as you include all the information your event or promotion warrants, the page count isn’t super critical. And as for binding options, they have page count minimums and maximums that vary based on paper weight and thickness.

See how many pages your booklet binding can accommodate and other FAQs.

Standard booklet sizes differ from hardcover and paperback book sizes. So how big is a booklet? Common booklet sizes are 5.5” x 8.5” and 8.5” x 11”, but when you print with Smartpress, you can customize yours to any booklet size you want.

Again, it comes down to the purpose of your booklet. If your booklet is a manual or annual report, you may want to stick to standard sizes, but if it’s for promotional or advertising needs, you have more freedom to play around with custom sizes. After all, you want to be unique in your industry!

Be sure to consider practical things like the actual printing of your booklet and how you’re distributing it. This can impact the size you choose (and your budget).

Once you’ve determined the purpose of your booklet and chosen the binding and size, then comes the fun part – designing it! Here are a few tips to consider when creating yours:

1. Plan your layout: Outline your messaging and content in a clear, consistent way. Make sure it aligns with your objectives and the expectations of your audience.
2. Pick your paper: Choose a text weight for interior pages and a cover weight for your front and back cover. Experiment with coated, uncoated and recycled paper stocks.
3. Select images: Include high-quality imagery that reflects your brand and messaging. The best resolution for printing is 300 PPI.

When you’re ready to create and upload your print-ready file for Smartpress, find specifics about how to arrange your pages, document size, bleed and more based on your binding choice.

Booklets play a huge role in your print marketing strategy, whether you print them for one campaign or every campaign. They’re also a huge asset for boosting your brand or organization’s visibility and can be business essentials like manuals and reports. In other words: They’re indispensable.

Now that we’ve answered the question what is a booklet, it’s time to design and print yours with Smartpress. With premium options to customize yours for any occasion and speciality finishes that ensure yours stands out, you can turn booklets into a reliable ROI.