Pick up a leaflet at the gate of Spitalfields City Farm and you are holding one square sheet, folded once and printed in black on both sides. Open it out and an illustrated map of the farm spreads across the whole sheet; flip it over and an appeal for support runs in English and Bengali. It cost very little to print, and it helps every visitor who takes one.
Lydia, who designs much of the farm’s print, sent us her usual exacting spec and copied in Phil, who runs the farm, from the very first email.
What is printed on each side
Folded, the front panel shouts WELCOME! in rough, condensed display capitals, with the Bengali greeting set just beneath. Unfold it and the map takes over: an isometric plan of the site with dotted outlines for the enclosures, grey paths and buildings built from tints of black, and bold silhouettes for a donkey, goats, poultry and bees. Main gate, office and shop, tea hut and toilet, growing space, bee hives, big animals and small animals are all labelled twice, English above Bengali. Between the silhouettes and the doubled labels, a visitor gets their bearings at a glance.
The reverse carries the appeal. “Even little donations make a big difference” heads the English panel, followed by ways to give, a newsletter sign up and the farm’s social handle, with QR codes and little £ coin drawings dotted through. A dotted line runs down the centre, and the Bengali panel mirrors it on the other side. Body copy runs in a typewriter face, and a woodcut donkey beside the words Estd 1978 signs off the sheet as the farm’s mark.
If your audience speaks more than one language, set the key messages in both. On a single ink job it costs nothing extra on press, and it tells every reader they are expected.
Why a single fold and black ink
Lydia’s first spec cross folded the 210mm square sheet down to a 105mm square. Overnight she reconsidered and proposed a single vertical fold instead, and we re-priced it within the hour. The simpler fold won: 210 x 105mm closed, a tall, slim panel that fits a hand or a display stand and opens to a full sheet for the map, a textbook case for single fold leaflet printing.
Lydia had wondered about a recycled or FSC uncoated sheet and asked for our samples to go to Phil, so our swatches were in the post to him that same afternoon. She then asked us to hold her artwork until he had handled the papers himself. He chose House Uncoated at 120gsm. It has the body to survive being unfolded, refolded and stuffed in a pocket, and its bright white surface keeps black type sharp. Black ink on both sides kept the cost down and the artwork simple: a two page PDF, one page per side, exported at the default High Quality Print setting.
Choosing paper for your own leaflet? Order our box of printed paper swatches and fold a sheet of each before you decide.
A proof question worth copying
At proof stage Lydia asked the question every designer of folded work should. Her map wraps round the fold onto the back panel, and a dotted line sits exactly on the centre of the inside spread, so she wanted to know that both sides would print as true spreads rather than as four single pages. A fraction of a millimetre out and map paths stop meeting. Mike confirmed they would line up exactly as they did on her original double page artwork.
Then she did something just as smart. She insisted that final approval come from the farm, because the designer is too close to the job to be the last pair of eyes. We held the job until Phil gave the word, then put the leaflets on press.
The farm has kept coming back since, with a volunteer handbook and then leaflets for its team challenge days. When Lydia brought us that third job, her enquiry included this line.
“Phil is keen to use you again (and of course, I’m very happy with that)”
Lydia, the farm’s designer
That volunteer handbook for the farm, a square stapled booklet on recycled stock, matches this leaflet's 210mm square size. New volunteers read the farm's story in black ink across its 12 pages, and only the cover carries full colour.
A map, an appeal or both on one sheet: price a folded leaflet online and send us the artwork when it is ready.
PaperbacksA5, 44 pages, perfect bound£246for 100
Product cataloguesA5, 28 pages, stapled£166for 100