The doll is a printed proof of your file, simulating, roughly, how it should stay in its final (ie, printed) format. The doll is used to identify and prevent failures that were not or could not be identified without the generation of a “prototype”.
There are several types of doll. The most common dolls in the graphics area are the dolls / prototypes of catalogs, brochures, folders, packaging and boxes. These printed materials are generally a little more complex, need folds and therefore deserve special attention before they are produced.
In this tutorial, we will cover the doll for catalogs, because it is made more frequently than the others.
As the image below illustrates, a catalog is composed of several parts: page, sheet, sheet, and notebook.
In the example above, we start with a sheet of paper. With the printing on both sides of the blade, in addition to the fold, we created two sheets. As each sheet has two pages, we obtain as a final product a four page folder.
The above example illustrates the process of assembling a notebook from a printed and folded sheet. The joining of three blades by the clip creates the notebook. In this case, the notebook has twelve pages, six sheets and is composed of three blades.
When assembling your doll you must first impose the pages, that is, leave them in a position so that when assembling the notebooks they are in the correct position.
The “homemade” imposition of the doll works as follows:
The imposition begins by positioning the cover with the fourth cover. That is, the first page is next to the last page, and the second page next to the last one. In this example we have page 1 and page 4 attached in imposition, front page 2 and page 3, on the reverse.
If it is not possible to print your doll on two-sided, stick both sides respecting the imposition. Mark the fold in its proper place and fold your doll inside, leaving the first and last page on the outside.
When printing, make sure the imposition is being done correctly. You can print the entire black and white file the first time to check the order of the pages. Making sure that everything is correct, you can print a color version for checking the color combination.
- The cover will be your reference, so start with it.
- When opening, check that the order of the pages on the back is correct.
- 3.Then, inside the cover notebook, insert the other sheets, pages 2 and 3, 4 and 5, respectively. Do this until the blades run out.
- Close the model completely and make the necessary checks.
As you can see, putting together a doll is very easy and allows you to visualize details that can only be perceived with the printed model. The puppet is recommended for print size checks, font readability (or other elements such as QR Codes, for example), grammatical errors, elements very close to the edges of the paper, and page order.