Paper GSM for your printed leaflets

Before you even begin to design your leaflet template or a5 flyer what type of paper you are going to use? This usually means considering paper thickness which will determine the quality of the paper.

We printers love to confuse you with lots of funny technical sounding jargon so I thought I’d try and make things easier by explaining. The first thing you will probably hear your printer say is ‘what type of GSM are you looking for?’ It at this point that many go blank; all they wanted was some simple leaflets printed.

GSM isn’t difficult, it’s just a method used to specify how thick the sheet of paper is and to do this printers have to measure its weight in grams per square metre (GSM). It’s quite logical because imagine trying to measure how wide different paper or card is?

I know this doesn’t exactly help you at this point for printing leaflets. To help you:

• a good quality letterhead or compliment slip will be 120gsm
• a quality business card is usually 400gsm
• a postcard is most often 300gsm
• photocopier paper of lower quality is about 80gsm
• a restaurant menu is likely to be 130gsm

You do have to be careful, however, that the weights – and therefore how thick or stiff your paper is – can vary between one printer to another. Although GSM is a fairly good measure of the quality overall, it’s wise to shop around and compare by asking for samples. Take into account factors such as gloss or coating.

So far, so good but you still need to be sure that you choose the right thickness for your particular printing project. An a5 flyer will need a different quality from a formal post card. If you are going to have lots of colour on your printed leaflet then you might want to think about a coated finish such as silk or gloss. However avoid gloss if you want your potential customers to write something on it. Silk and matt papers need to be machine sealed to avoid smudging which is likely to add to cost.

If choosing uncoated paper, it can still be used for full colour leaflets and flyers but the colours tend to be less deep and vibrant. There are lots of brands of paper to choose from so ask your printer to send you samples of these too because reproduction in colour will differ between different types of paper upon which the ink is printed,

To summarise, it is important to consider exactly what you want for your printing needs before you go ahead. Often this comes down to deciding on quality versus cost. If all this still sounds confusing, give me a call or drop me a mail and I’ll help you out. It’s not as difficult as it sounds.

Tags: flyer printing, leaflet design

This entry was posted on February 10, 2012 at 4:55 pm and is filed under Flyers, Leaflets, Offers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.