Cutting and trimming your notebook

If your notebook page is smaller than the paper it is printed on, you will cut the excess away. Notebook Generator prints crop marks (short solid lines outside the page corners) and fold marks (dashed lines at the spine) whenever there is room on the sheet.

Tools

• Rotary or guillotine paper trimmer: fastest for single sheets and two-up layouts.
• Craft knife, steel ruler and cutting mat: works for everything, including trimming a whole folded booklet. Use a fresh blade.
• Bone folder: for sharp folds before trimming.

Cutting two copies per sheet

With Two copies per sheet turned on, a dashed cut line runs between the two copies. Cut every sheet along it first, keeping the two halves in two separate stacks in their original order. Each stack becomes one notebook.

Trimming single sheets before folding

1. Line up the crop marks with the cutting edge of the trimmer.
2. Cut along the lines that the crop marks point to, never through the page area itself.
3. Do the long edges first, then the short edges.

Trimming a folded booklet

Trimming after folding gives the cleanest front edge, especially for thick booklets where the inner sheets stick out (see creep in paper and margins).

1. Fold and staple or sew the booklet first.
2. Clamp it flat under a steel ruler, with the ruler on the line connecting the crop marks at the front edge.
3. Cut with many light strokes rather than one hard one. Keep the blade vertical.
4. Trim the top and bottom the same way if needed.

Tips

• Cut a little inside the trim line rather than outside: a millimetre less is invisible, a white sliver is not.
• Templates keep their content inside the margins, so a slightly imperfect cut never cuts through writing lines.
• For covers with colour to the edge, use 3 mm bleed so small cutting errors do not show.