Techniques / Binding
Saddle Stitch
The workhorse binding: folded sheets stapled through the spine's fold. Flat-opening, economical from 8 to 64 pages, and far more expressive than its office-printer reputation.
Ours can go standard or strange: black staples on colored stock (a house favorite), covers in kraft or metallic paper, self-covers for the honest zine look, French folds for double-thickness pages. Saddle stitch is the right call for booklets, programs, zines, and short magazines — anything that needs to open flat and ship light.
Page counts must be multiples of 4, and past ~64 pages the piece wants perfect binding instead. We'll tell you which side of the line you're on.
Make the staple a statement
The stitch itself can carry design: black staples on colored stock read instantly intentional, and loop staples turn a program into a binder-ready piece. Prefer thread to wire? Singer sewing stitches the same formats with visible colored thread — staples' more interesting cousin.
Saddle stitch samples
FAQ
Why must pages come in multiples of 4?
Each folded sheet yields four pages — that's the geometry of the fold. We'll help you plan the flatplan so nothing gets padded.
How many pages can saddle stitch hold?
Comfortably 8 to 64. Past that, the piece creeps and wants perfect binding — we'll tell you which side of the line you're on.
Do the booklets open flat?
Yes — flat-opening is saddle stitch's superpower, which is why programs and lookbooks love it.
Can the staples be black?
A house favorite — black staples on colored or kraft stock. The hardware becomes part of the design.