Cracked Brochures?

Why do my brochures crack?
Tri-Lakes Printing specializes in full color printing.  We have made it possible for our customers to get small quantities of full color quality printing with a quick turn-around time.  To get a higher resolution of color, graphics and photos, most full color printing is done on a coated paper.  When coated paper is folded it cracks.

There are two ways to produce brochures.  For quantities less than 1000 they are run digitally on a color copy machine.  For quantities over 1000 they are run on our DI 4-color press.
When the brochures are run digitally the toner sits on top of the paper and this makes the cracking much worse than if the brochures were run on the press.  The press uses ink and the ink soaks into the paper and therefore causes  less cracking.

There are three solutions to this problem:

  • Don’t design your brochure with dark colors on the folds.  Use light colors or leave the brochure white on the fold.  The cracking is not noticeable.
  • Have your brochure printed on a semi gloss paper instead of a gloss.  It will look just as nice and the paper does not crack.
  • If you want your brochure in a dark color or black and you still need glossy paper we can score the paper so it doesn’t crack.  We have an excellent scoring machine that produces a high quality score and it eliminates the cracking on most jobs.

As always, feel free to talk to our customer service representatives about your custom order to get the best results for your specific project.

Call for a quote today 719-488-2544