Booklet (Ashcan) Layout and Printing in InDesign

[Glen Moyes]

I made this video tutorial today on how to do layout and printing for ashcan books—or any other kind of booklet—in InDesign.

(By the way, we may want to think about making a tutorial/learning/educational/something-or-other subforum for stuff like this. And where's the fullscreen button on the videos?)



There are a lot of artists out there that make good money at conventions selling sketchbooks and minicomics printed from their desktop printers. All it takes is Letter-sized sheets of paper and a stapler.

The trick is organizing the pages so they are in the right order when you staple and fold your book down the middle (that's called 2-Up Saddle Stich binding). Unfortunately, artists that don't know about InDesign's booklet printing will often do that page reorganizing (imposition) process by hand in Illustrator or Photoshop as separate documents for each spread.

You don't have to do that! You can quickly lay out your booklet in InDesign and have it prepare a single PDF file for you, with the imposition taken care of automatically.

[Charles]

Glen, an excellent tutorial. Thanks! Hope to see more of them from you.