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Bespoke lookbook printing at Ex Why Zed.

Promotional printing for your fashion and homeware brand.
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Promotional printing for your fashion or homeware brand.

We are specialists in developing bespoke print products to suit your needs. We can help you to capture the energy and sharp tailoring of your product with our many years of industry experience and our printing know-how. Let us help you to promote your new seasonal products by combining state of the art printing technology with individual style to create your very own print collection.

We Want to Print for You

We don’t work only with household names! Our clients include many small-to-medium-sized businesses. Further down this page you’ll see examples of lookbooks we’ve printed for clients of all sizes.

LOOKBOOKS ARE CREATED HERE!

Our goal is to produce a stylish lookbook for your brand

Many of the world’s most respected brands trust us to print their lookbooks. You can join them!

lookbook-logobox-2021

LOOKBOOK OPTIONS

What options are there?

Printing that does justice to your message

Print an aspirational lookbook that captures the narrative and signature style of your brand or product. The are options to hit all price brackets and many bespoke solutions such as foiling or embossing to really enhance your product and brand.

Lookbook Printing Size Options

We can print Lookbooks from a pocket sized A6 size, right up to an eye-catching A3. There are paper finishes to suit all types of appearance and feel: smooth silk for a slick premium touch or uncoated for a more rustic, tactile solution. We’re always at the end of the phone or on email to answer any questions you may have.

For a more off-kilter and dynamic solution you could print the lookbook as an A2 poster which folds down to A5. These are lightweight and therefore cheap for you to post out and whilst still providing 16 A5 panels of content to fill.

We understand that all print projects are price conscious so we quote keenly to help stretch your budget. Additionally we tend to supply a few quantity options so you can see the impact different quantities has on the unit price.

Once the price is agreed then you’ll need to have a read through our bespoke file set up guide which are lovingly prepared to help out all designers from those printing a Lookbook for the first time right up to experienced artworkers.

MAKE YOUR BRAND STAND OUT

Printing winning Lookbooks

We have been doing this a while now and have seen a lot of impressive publications come off our presses.  To give you a head start with your lookbook printing, here are three print specifications which work well (and photos of them, see right).  Each has its own characteristics which have proven to be winning combinations from a production perspective, cost per unit and most importantly, have consumer appeal.

Choose a Winning Print Spec

If any of our showcase options would work for your project, take a note of the spec and jump on our quote form to receive your bespoke quotation. Or ping us an email on hello@exwhyzed.fixed-staging.co.uk if that is easier.

Showcase 1 – a neat, cost-effective stapled A5 lookbook with all the pages onto the same paper weight:
A5 Wire Stitched Booklets
28pp Self Cover onto 170gsm Uncoated
Four colour print throughout
We can print 100 copies of this spec for £1.64 per lookbook.

Showcase 2 – a professional-looking perfect bound book with premium weight uncoated inside pages creating a more tactile finish:
A5 Perfect Bound Books.
4pp Cover onto 300gsm Uncoated.
Matt Lamination to outer.
40pp Text onto 170gsm Uncoated.
Four colour throughout.
We can print 250 copies of this spec for £1.99 per lookbook.

Showcase 3 – a dynamic folded lookbook that doubles up as a poster:
A2 folded to A5 Leaflets
Four colour double sided
onto 115gsm Silk
Trimmed and cross folded to size:
One horizontal fold and three parallel concertina folds.
We can print 250 copies of this spec for £1.63 per lookbook.

Amendments you could consider to tailer the lookbook to your brand:
• Reducing the cover to 250gsm which also makes it easier to open.
• Print all the pages onto the same paper weight, making a self-cover lookbook.
• Switching to gloss lamination for a shiny aesthetic.
• Increase the size to A5 to save you money and make the publication more ergonomic.
• OR increase to A4 for a larger area of content.
• Increase the weight of the inside pages to 170gsm making it more substantial and impressive for the reader.
• Pick out some content on the cover for Spot UV varnishing, foiling and embossing (these are an additional £280).

Get your print quote
THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

Enjoy looking through our showcase of recent lookbook printing.

FASHION LAUNCH LOOKBOOKS
Ex Why Zed x stellasport x adidas

The London design agency, Clubhouse Studios, were keen to print an authentic old school Zine to promote the new range of sportswear from Stella McCartney and Adidas. We sent out one of our much loved sample packs and the 100% Recycled Uncoated range was chosen for its lightweight, natural feel.

There were initial discussions about perfect binding the zines because of the number of pages but that would have not fitted with the overall aesthetic. The challenge was to retain the zine feel and appearance whilst accomodating the 40 pages. At this stage it was decided that perhaps 160gsm was too bulky so we eventually settled on 100gsm Uncoated for a really compact publication. The layout is fresh, loose and completely without boundaries. Each page is a treat for the reader’s eyes with a barrage of fashion photography, clashing colours and cut n paste typography.

The print spec is A4 Booklets with 40pp Self Cover onto 100gsm Uncoated 100% Recycled, Four colour print throughout. Trimmed, collated and wire stitched.

We can print a similar publication for your brand!

 

BENEFITS OF OUR LOOKBOOK PRINTING
When printing lookbooks with Ex Why Zed you will experience all of the following as standard:
An online company...with real people
We don’t believe that you should have to settle for the bare minimum from your print company. You have spent hours, weeks and months preparing your stunning artwork so why would you now go and give it to a printer where you can get an instant price, upload a pdf, then the files disappear and you have to keep your fingers crossed that what turns up is what you expected?
Environmentally friendly papers.
All of our papers are FSC Approved. These are arguably better than 100% recycled papers because there are fewer chemicals involved in making them. We also use vegetable inks on our litho press.
Super Helpful Set Up Guides
We give you all the tools you need to quickly and easily prepare print ready artwork. When it is time to start artworking your final book take 5 minutes to read through our file set up guides. We have made them as user friendly as possible but if you’re stuck drop us a call or email for a quick answer.
Free Paper Samples
While we’ve done our best on our paper choices page to make one sheet of white paper look different to another sheet of white paper, there’s nothing better than seeing them in reality so you can stroke, sniff and examine them in close up. Jump on our form and we will send out a pack out asap.
No Minimum Order
At Ex Why Zed you can print any quantity from 1 upwards and the exact number you need. If you'd like 71 zines then we'll print 71 zines!. If your magazine is in its infancy then a long print run might be out of reach for Issue One. Our digital presses offer the perfect solution with low unit prices so you can test the market first.
UK & Worldwide delivery
Delivery within the UK is free and the zines will arrive the day after they leave us. We also deliver work around the world too and just charge the shipping at our cost price from the cheapest courier on the day.
Choose a bespoke size
'A' sizes are great and fit neatly into 'C' size envelopes but why not mix it up and rebel against convention by choosing a bespoke and custom size for your zine.
Your go-to print supplier
We want to become a reliable cog in your supply mechanism. Send us your artwork, we’ll preflight it for no extra charge, then print it and deliver with no fuss allowing you to concentrate on running the creative aspects of your business.

STILL HAVE QUESTIONS?

All the answers for your lookbook print questions

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.

View all our FAQ's
Ready to place an order?

Excellent, use www.wetransfer.com to send us the finished, print ready artwork. In the comments box let us know how many copies you’d along with where you would like us to deliver the finished Lookbooks. Our eagle eyed pre press team will 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.

What is wire stitching?

Wire stitching is a little bit of print jargon for ‘stapling’. If you have an A5 booklet then we print it onto A4 sheets, fold them in and put staples along the left-hand edge to bind the sheet together. In some quarters, this is also known as ‘saddle stitching’. Let’s stick with stapling though if that’s easier 🙂

Needs to be a multiple of four pages to work as a stapled booklet. Why? Because when you fold a printed sheet in half, you get four pages of content – try it there and you’ll see what we mean 🙂

What is perfect binding?

The perfect bound method of binding will give your publication a square spine and professional looking finish.

For further advice follow our perfect binding set up guides.

How do I add bleed to my file?

https://www.youtube.com/embed/9elKD4qeGKU
https://www.exwhyzed.fixed-staging.co.uk/resources/setting-3mm-bleed-on-artwork-for-print/

We will need 3mm bleed on all the edges, you’ll notice at the moment that the artwork stops at the crop marks – it needs to extend 3mm beyond this to avoid any chance of a white border.

The following page includes illustrated and video guides on how to set up bleed correctly:

Setting up bleed for print.

You might have set this up correctly in InDesign but when you export to PDF just make sure that in the ‘Marks and Bleeds’ menu you not only tick ‘Crop Marks’ but you also add ‘3mm’ in to the four bleed boxes – top, bottom, inside and outside. This will add the bleed to the exported PDF.

BLEED FIX

It’s one of two things:

Have you dragged the background image out 3mm beyond the black line on your Indesign file into the bleed area?  Try that then export again.

OR you have done the above but then when you’re exporting you need to click the Marks and Bleeds menu, then type ‘3mm’ into the four bleed boxes.  This will add the bleed to the pdf.

How long does it take?

We will aim to deliver the finished books in 4/5 working days after receiving your print-ready artwork.  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>

 

How do I pay?

Once we have checked your artwork we will send over an invoice for you to pay by online bank transfer or credit card through Stripe.

Will my artwork look like it does on screen?

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.

Why aren’t your prices online?

We don’t advertise our prices online because we prefer to open up a conversation with you and find out a little bit about the project. Your artwork is unique and bespoke, so in turn, we will provide you a unique and bespoke print quote for your job.  I am sure you will take no fun in looking at a boring spreadsheet with rows of bemusing numbers so we don’t put you though that.

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