Real World Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications

Multipage Imposition

Let the spatial reasoning games begin! As you move beyond single pieces like business cards, you won’t be surprised to discover that things get a bit trickier.

When multipage pieces are imposed, the sheet is folded and trimmed to become a group of printed pages, called a signature. Depending on the page size, the press capabilities, and the type of binding to be used, a signature could comprise 8, 16, 32, or more pages.

This might be a good time to get a little destructive in the name of science. Buy (or borrow) a weekly news magazine and leaf through it. The pages appear, as you might expect, in reader’s spreads: 2–3, 4–5, 6–7, and so on.

But pry out the staples at the center of the magazine and note how the pages were ...