What are standard brochure sizes? Flat and folded

Sheet first, fold second

Printers sell brochures by sheet and fold. VistaPrint offers tri fold brochures on 8.5 by 11, 8.5 by 14 and 9 by 16 inch sheets, and bi fold brochures on 9 by 8, 8.5 by 11 and 11 by 17 inch sheets, each folded in half to give a front, a back and two inside panels. Outside North America the equivalents are A4 tri folds, which finish close to the DL size that fits a DL envelope and a standard rack, and A3 folded once to A4 for a four page brochure. The sheet decides cost; the fold decides how the story unfolds.

Why tri fold panels are not equal

On a roll fold, the familiar tri fold, one end panel tucks inside the other two. If all three panels were exactly a third of the sheet, the inner one would hit the fold and buckle, so it is made slightly narrower: on A4 the panels are 100, 100 and 97 millimetres, and on US letter 3.688, 3.688 and 3.624 inches. A Z fold, which opens like an accordion, uses three equal panels. The printer's own template settles the exact figure, because thicker paper needs a larger allowance.

Planning the reading order

A tri fold is read in a sequence: the cover first, then the panel that opens on the left, then the full inside spread of three panels, and finally the back. The back panel is the one people see when the brochure is lying face down, so contact details and a map belong there. The inside spread is where the main content goes, read left to right. A bi fold is simpler: cover, inside spread, back. Sketch a folded paper mock up before designing anything; it catches most ordering mistakes in a minute.

Common mistakes

The first is equal panels on a roll fold, which makes the tucked panel catch and the brochure refuse to close flat. The second is a photo or line of text crossing a fold. The third is designing the outside and inside on one face of the file, so the printer prints them back to back the wrong way round. The fourth is heavy card folded without scoring, which cracks the ink along the crease, especially on dark backgrounds.

Brochures and the flyer editor

A4 landscape is one of the flyer editor's eight canvas sizes, at 1754 by 1240 pixels, so the flat A4 sheet of a tri fold is a size it makes, and a two page flyer can hold the outside and inside faces. The editor has no fold guides, so place the panel boundaries yourself using the trifold panel calculator's measurements and keep text clear of them. Exports are 3508 by 2480 pixels, RGB, with no bleed or crop marks, so add bleed with the bleed and trim calculator if the printer asks. US letter, legal and 11 by 17 sheets are not in the editor; the flyer size resizer converts the export, and the blank PNG above is the flat A4 sheet at 300 DPI.

Questions people ask