Carmarthen calls itself the oldest town in Wales, and the first edition of its newest paper asks what that town could become next. Materion Lleol / Local Matters is a community newsletter from LocalMotion Carmarthen, edited with the town’s Doughnut Economics Working Group and written in Welsh and English. Page two explains why they chose print: “We’ve been inspired to use the format of a printed paper as a familiar and tactile physical platform which can be a meeting point for our town.” Through our newspaper printing service it became a 24 page A3 paper, full colour on 60gsm uncoated and stitched with two staples. It’s a cracking way to get a message out: nobody scrolls past an A3 page left open on a café table.
The front page holds back on purpose
A photograph of a community meeting in a hall is printed in navy alone, and the halftone screen shows if you lean in. The masthead curves round it in a broad arc, Materion Lleol over Local Matters, with the LocalMotion logo in the corner. One colour on the cover makes you curious about what sits behind it.
Turn to page two and colour floods in. The English welcome sits in dark ink with the Welsh beside it in terracotta red, above a hand drawn mind map on solid blue. The Local Assembly spread sets a deep navy text page against a full page black and white group portrait, ringed with the words “We talk, we listen, we argue”. Young people from DRMZ have filled a giant blue circle with chalky drawings, and one speech bubble reads “After a bad day at school it makes me feel better”.
That is the beauty of A3. Every spread opens to A2, a huge area for content and imagery, which lets a photograph fill a whole page and a drawing sprawl across the fold. On uncoated stock the navy solids soak into the fibres and dry with a soft, velvety finish.
Staples turned out to be the quicker build
Within minutes of our quote, Amy, who prepared the files for LocalMotion, asked whether the paper would look and feel like a newspaper, and whether leaving out the staples would save money.
The first answer was easy. Our 60gsm uncoated is the lightest stock our press will run, so it has the papery handle of the real thing, and fresh off the press it smells magnificent. Mike added a favourite trick: place a scan of tinted newsprint behind your pages for a faint yellow or pink cast, as the Financial Times does, and he sent a link to high resolution images of several papers. Amy used it, and the finished text pages carry a warm oatmeal tone behind every column.
The staple question has the less obvious answer. Unstapled copies would have taken us longer and cost more, since our binding line is set up for stitching and loose folded papers mean reconfiguring it. Twenty four A3 pages come from six A2 sheets printed both sides and nested together, and the staples keep them in reading order however often the paper changes hands. “OK staples is fine then,” Amy replied. Packed in shrink wrapped sets, a stack looks ready for the newsstand.
Just over three hours from first email to press
Amy had already spoken to our live chat when her email landed one Tuesday morning: pages ready, deadline a week away (“tight i know”). Our quote went back six minutes later. Around midday she had the settings: one PDF of single A3 pages running front to back, 3mm of bleed round each edge, crop marks only, 426 x 303mm overall. She checked that the spreads would print at A2 and that the inner bleed would show 3mm of the facing page. “Hey, yep, both correct!”
The PDF reached us by twenty to one. Our free file check found photographs in RGB, so Mike sent the InDesign export setting that converts them to CMYK, plus a list of images light on resolution. His quick fix is worth pinning up: shrink a picture to half its width on the page and its effective resolution doubles, so 100dpi becomes 200dpi. Amy worked through the list and sent an updated file, and by twenty to two the job was off to press with Mike’s note, “Thanks for being proactive.”
The papers had left our studio by Friday evening. Amy’s office would be empty on the Saturday, so Mike checked first thing and confirmed they would arrive in the new week, and they reached Carmarthen on the morning Amy had set as her deadline. Her reply: “They have arrived! I’m not there today but have been told they look great.”
First editions shape every later issue. For another paper on featherweight 60gsm, see the oversized music paper we made for Ledbyher, and if your group is planning an issue one, our beginner’s guide to starting a newspaper covers the groundwork. When your pages are ready, price your paper in a couple of minutes and tell us which morning it needs to land in your town.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100