Instruction Sheets, Manuals & User Information Leaflets for Garments & Apparel

Where this sits in the pack

Fotoset has been printing since 1983 and is run by Santanu Roy. Work for garments and apparel is a standing part of the plant's output, and instruction sheets and manuals is produced as a repeat item rather than a one-off. That matters when the second and third runs have to sit next to the first without a visible difference.

In garments and apparel, instruction sheets and manuals is used for work of this kind:

• User information leaflets packed with gloves, footwear and other protective equipment
• Multi-language instruction sheets for European distribution
• Warranty cards and care sheets inserted into shoe boxes and garment packs
• Assembly and use manuals for tools and hardware

In this sector the printed set around the product usually includes the following, and Fotoset can supply all of it on one order rather than leaving the buyer to co-ordinate three suppliers:

• Swing tags in the buyer's format, punched and strung or fitted with a loop lock
• Sewn satin and taffeta labels for neck, side seam and pocket positions
• Care and composition labels in the languages the destination requires
• Size stickers and cube stickers for polybags and inner cartons

The usual build

Size and format range: Flat sheets from A7 to A2, folded down to as small as 40 x 55 mm. Booklets from 8 to 96 pages, saddle-stitched. Swing tags are usually 300 to 350 GSM art or kraft board; sewn labels are satin, taffeta or coated polyester.

Printing is by sheet-fed offset for process and spot colours, with silkscreen used where an opaque white, a metallic or a fluorescent is specified. Both processes are in the same building, so a combination job runs without moving the sheet.

• Sheet-fed offset, one to four colours, with fine text held at small point sizes
• Typesetting checked against the customer's supplied translation files before plate-making
• Pictograms and standard marks reproduced as vector, never rescaled from raster images

Substrates and finishes commonly chosen

• Maplitho and offset paper 60, 70, 80 and 90 GSM for folded leaflets
• Coated art paper 90 to 150 GSM for booklets with images
• Bible and lightweight papers where a high page count must fit a small pack

Every finishing operation this item needs happens in-house: lamination, coating, die-cutting, creasing, punching, eyeletting and packing. Sheets are not sent out between operations, which removes the most common cause of delay and of damage on a instruction sheets and manuals job.

• Cross, roll, concertina, gate and map folding to eight or more panels
• Saddle stitching and side stitching
• Guillotining to a stated finished size with square-cut edges
• Counting, banding and bulk packing for the packing line

What has to be printed by law or by standard

Fotoset prints the marks and declarations supplied by the customer and does not alter them. Artwork is checked before plate-making and any mark that will not reproduce cleanly is queried in writing. For garments and apparel, the content that commonly appears on this item includes:

• Fibre composition declaration in the required languages
• Care symbols to the ISO 3758 set, reproduced as vector
• Country of origin marking
• Importer identification for European and UK retail
• Recycling and packaging waste marks

Languages

Care and composition text is commonly supplied in five to twelve European languages. Indian domestic supply adds Hindi and Bengali.

Ordering pattern

• Orders peak ahead of European autumn and spring deliveries, with tight windows either side
• Size and colour assortment changes generate late repeat runs of stickers and tickets
• Festive and gifting seasons in India create short high-volume runs

What we need from your studio

• Press-ready PDF, version 1.4 or later, with 3 mm bleed on all four sides and crop marks outside the trim.
• Native Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW files accepted, with fonts converted to outlines and linked images embedded.
• Images at 300 dpi at final printed size. Line art and barcode artwork supplied as vector wherever possible.
• Colour built in CMYK. Spot colours called out by Pantone reference in the file and in the purchase order.
• Die line supplied on a separate named layer, in a spot colour set to overprint, not on the artwork layer.