2 A4 to 2-up on A3?

[vidiotabc]

I've designed a double-sided, A4 brochure as my first indesign project. It currently exists as 2 separate A4 pages. However the printer has asked me to supply it to them as "2up A3 with a 10mm gutter and 2mm bleed" pdf file.

My biggest problem is outputting the indesign project to these requirements. Should I do this in indesign or acrobat? How to I change the document setup? Should I simply change to A3 and manually move the 2nd page to fill a single A3 layout?

The bleed issue I vaguely comprehend. Though they tell me that they don't print to the edge anyway unless I pay more than I think I want to so I don't really understand why.

If a3 is two a4 pages, how do you fit in a 10mm gutter? Is a gutter relevant anyway? It isn't going to be bound.

As you may guess, I'm a little out of my depth, though I still believe the printer could be more helpful.

Any advice much appreciated!

 

[jmgalvin]

Looks like it might be time for Kinkos, or some printer who's more helpful.

Basically he's telling you do "impose" the doc, generally the printer's job. If you don't have InBooklet - part of the Pagemaker plugin pack - with Indesign, it won't be easy. Even with InBooklet the gutter can be a problem. A3 is about twice the size of A4 and, in landscape mode, handles 2 A4s - about.

As I understand you, you want to print 2 pages, side by side (that's 2 up) on one piece of paper. That's rare, since most brochures are 4 pages - cover, pages 2&3, back cover. Here's how you would reformat in ID to do this.

Start a new doc and select A3 as the size and landscape as the orientation. In Columns, enter 2. For Gutter select about.4 in for now - it'll change. Select your margins. and hit OK.

Now you have the doc somewhat as the turkey printer wanted it. Open the first page of your present doc, select all, group, and copy. Paste it intoe the first column of the new A3 doc. Open P2, select all, copy, and paste into the 2nd cloumn on the A3 doc.

The thing probably looks lousy now - the gutter (space between columns) probably being too small. It usually looks best when the gutter is equal to up to twice the size of the left & right margins. You might want to play with that by going to Layout menu/margins and columns and making adjustments.

Unless you're trying to get something to print beyond any margin or gutter, you can leave the bleed set to 0. Then export a Press quality pdf.

You might want to play around with this on your own printer before spending money on getting something printed. If you have a standard 8.5 X 11 printer, start some new ID docs - selecting Letter Half as the page size. You can try printing 2up on your printer - depending on what your machine allows. You can also set up some Letter size docs in landscape mode and making some trial docs.