Give us a glue

The art of origami and pretty paper plants aside, understanding paper folds is essential for designers and clients alike. Whether designing a leaflet or pop-up children’s book, paper folds are as important to design as typefaces, formatting and illustrations. There’s a lot more to it than just folding a piece of paper in half or half again (in a ‘here’s one I made earlier’ kind of way) and believe it or not, paper folding is considered an art form.

Choosing the right layout, and therefore folding, reinforces the message of your document, engages the reader, makes you stand out from the crowd and lets you control the way the message is revealed – all pretty powerful stuff.

Paper can be folded into some downright crazy shapes, most of which you’ll never need, so for now we’ve just covered the basics in our handy guide, along with bindings and their typical applications. So whether you’re looking for a concertina, standard or parallel map fold, we’ve got it covered here.

» download our PDF guide