Ex Why Zed has built a reputation as the place to print an architecture research books. We appreciate that you want your book to have character, whilst displaying your drawings and work in an interesting and unique manner.
Chances are, you may never have printed anything professionally before so the terminology, jargon, amount of choices can be baffling. We have great experience of printing architecture books since we launched in 2006. Sit back and relax, we are here to guide you through the process.
It won’t be long now before you experience that super exciting moment when a glorious stack of boxes arrives and you unpack the first book. YOUR BOOK. Your book that you wrote, designed and have now transformed into print.
The Kent School of Architecture designed some impressive invites for their show in 2014 with an acutely crafted set of holes across the surface of a sleeve which the invite slid into. No problem, we motion cut the printed sheet to size.
Ex Why Zed are specialist creative book printers who will work with you to take your artwork from screen to a wide range of printed outcomes. Our video series will really expand your knowledge on the options available in print, our FAQ section answers all your questions and our file set-up guides will make you a better designer.
Ultimately printing isn’t a daunting experience. You’ve done the hard work and come up with a creative idea for your zine. Getting it into print is the easy part.
It’s 2021 and it has never been easier to self-publish a book. Brilliantly, you don’t even need a publisher anymore with the number of options available. Jump on Kickstarter and start a crowdfunding campaign, tell the world about your great publication and become fully funded before you go to print.
Size, number of pages and quantity are the factors that have the biggest impact on your price. Increasing or reducing these can stretch your budget.
There are almost infinite possibilities on size, finishing and papers. However, the three basic choices for paper finish are silk, gloss or uncoated. The more tactile and fibrous qualities of uncoated lend themselves well to architecture books or choose silk to give your drawings and images more crunch and vibrancy. The weight of your inside pages will be between 100gsm and 170gsm. For a thick cover choose 300gsm or 350gsm. The best thing to do is take a while to look through our case study portfolio. We have listed the print spec of each book so if there is something that will work well for your publication, note down the spec and we can quote on like-for-like.
Ultimately, the factors you need to choose are:
• What size is your publication?
• How many pages do you have?
• What kind of finish would work best with your artwork: silk, gloss or uncoated?
• What type of binding? The rule of thumb is wire stitching (Stapling) for up to 40 pages and perfect binding for over 40.
• And finally how many copies would you like?
If you have a larger budget and want your book to REALLY stand out then we offer a wide array of premium extras. We are creatives too so offer foiling, embossing, debossing, spot varnishing, die-cutting, motion cutting, fold out pages, GF Smith papers and many more solutions to make your project unique. Check our dedicated page to see what can be achieved.
Ready to place an order? Brilliant, you’ll need to upload the files using www.wetransfer.com sending them to hello@exwhyzed.fixed-staging.co.uk and in the comments box let us know the number of copies you’re going for and the best address for delivery. We’ll then give your artwork a free preflight check to highlight any potential issues and will email with any advice or recommendations before going to production.
Once we receive your print ready artwork, we’ll aim to deliver in 5/6 working days, This does depend on the print spec and bespoke options to add extra time – Rome wasn’t built in a day 🙂
So, if you are working to a crucial deadline PLEASE allow more time – there’s no harm in getting the artwork to us early so we can deliver a few days before the show starts 🙂
If you need any advice on preparing the artwork please do give us a call or email, we’d be happy to talk you through it.
Enjoy looking through our showcase of recent architecture book printing.
If you were “just wondering” about something, well “just wonder” no more, here are the answers!
We have done our best to give you a huge wealth of information on this page and in our guides but if here are some frequently asked questions to help you get your work into print.
Ready to place an order? Brilliant, you’ll need to upload the files using www.wetransfer.com sending them to hello@exwhyzed.fixed-staging.co.uk and in the comments box let us know the number of copies you’re going for and the best address for delivery. We’ll then give your artwork a free preflight check to highlight any potential issues and will email with any advice or recommendations before going to production.
Once we receive your print ready artwork, we’ll aim to deliver in 5/6 working days (we do get busy at degree show time). If you are working to a crucial deadline PLEASE allow more time – there’s no harm in getting the artwork to us early so we can deliver a few days before the show starts 🙂
We will need 3mm bleed on all the edges.
The following page includes illustrated and video guides on how to set up bleed correctly:
The following video guide will help too:
We will aim to deliver the finished books in 5/6 working days after receiving your print-ready artwork. (This does depend on your print spec and hw many copies – longer print runs and bespoke jobs do take longer so best allow 10 working days+). If you are working to a crucial hand in deadline then we strongly advise leaving more time in case there are any artwork issues with your files or courier problems with delivery.
Additionally there can be a day or two of amends required to the artwork before it’s print ready which we’re more than happy to help with but you’ll need to factor that in to timings.
Remember, we’ll need a hi res pdf file with 3mm bleed and crop marks on each edge to go ahead please. Sending it over correctly first time means we can go straight to print. Do have a last check through our file set up guides to make sure all the boxes are ticked. <link>
Unfortunately what is seen on an RGB, backlit screen is never going to be the same as it appears on paper in cmyk. It’s just impossible to achieve that and no printer could. You will have to allow for some difference in the colours between the two mediums but having something tangible in your hands and seeing the images on paper gives the publication a charm that just sending out a pdf wont do.
