Imposition

Have you ever wondered how magazines manage to get all their pages in the right order every time? This is where imposition comes in.

How imposition can help you

Imposition forces you to think about how your magazine will be laid out, this is especially helpful when compiling your pages for printing. Ten minutes of planning will save you time when it comes to producing the final pages.

It's also incredibly helpful if you use DTP software – especially if you have QuarkXpress 5.0, which occasionally comes up as a free programme on a computer magazine. Keep your eyes out for it as we will add free templates over the coming months.

In a nutshell

Virtually every stapled magazine or tabloid newspaper will contain a total number of pages that are divisible by four.

For printing, pages are set in printers pairs. These are the two pages that are next to each other on the printing press, not next to each other in the magazine.

They always add up to 1 more than the total number of pages in the magazine. So if you have a 24 pages magazine, the page numbers in every printers pair adds up to 25.

Each printers pair has the odd numbered page on the left and the even numbered page on the right. So, pages 23 and 2 would go together - and add up to 25.

How do you work out the pair pairing?

The easiest way is to do a page number slalom. It's easier than it sounds! On a piece of paper, write down '1' on the right hand side. On the next line, write '2' on the left - and continue until you hit the middle number. In a 24 page magazine, that would be 12.

Remember, even numbers on the left, odd numbers on the right.

Then comes the second part - going back up the numbers. Next to 12, write 13, next to 11 write 14 and so on. You'll end up with a slalom a bit like the one to the right (but obviously going from 1 to 12).

What use is this?

You now know which two pages will go together when duplicating your pages together. This is handy if you print out individual A4 pages and shrink them down on the photocopier.

However the best use for this is using a programme like QuarkXpress. Quark allows you to set A5 pages and save them as EPS files. These are a bit like a picture file.

The save page as EPS allows you to save the page as an EPS file - a graphic file.

If you save every page of your magazine as an EPS, it makes the imposition (saving pages as printers pairs) easier.

Turning individual EPS pages into a printers pair

Download the printers pair Quark 5.0 document. It's an A4 page with two A5 picture boxes in it.

In the left hand box, insert the even number page of your printers pair:

Your Quark page will now look something like this.

Repeat the process for the right hand page - in this case, it's page 23. You will end up with a pair that looks like this:

You now have a perfect printers pair, which you can use for printing from. It's easier than mucking about with scissors and glue, or even cutting and pasting articles in your word processor!

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