In the current digital age, many people are surprised to find that physical instruction manuals still exist, and remain incredibly useful. These manuals are in high demand for companies releasing new software that require a technical manual, as well as companies who need an easily accessible manual, such as HR companies.
Printed vs Digital Instruction Manuals: Which One Is Best?
When you need to put instruction manuals together, you’re faced with the choice between printing them out or relying on digital copies.
While digital manuals can be conveniently accessed on several devices, it might not be practical for some businesses. Each person who uses the manual will need access to it through a device such as a computer or a smartphone. Therefore, you’ll need to supply devices such as a company phone at your business – which means steep costs for you.
A printed manual is often a cheaper and easier alternative to access. While printed manuals are relatively cheap to print, you can save a lot more money when ordering in bulk.
We find that a lot of our customers choose printed manual products as they prefer working with a physical medium. Some people prefer looking at a bound instruction manual rather than a document on a small phone screen.
The benefit of physical instruction manuals is that they are very easy to flick through when needed. You can make whatever notes you need to in an instruction manual, fold the pages, tear out sections, or even bookmark pages for quick reference. Print hasn’t lived out its usefulness just yet, just like newspapers haven’t yet lost out to digital print!
Instruction Manuals We Produce
Whatever kind of manual you need, we can make it for you. Whether you need perfect bound instruction manuals, wire-bound manuals or leaflet manuals, we have every type to suit your needs.
We know that different manuals suit different customers’ needs, this is why we ensure we produce a variety to meet those needs. One of the most commonly ordered manuals is wire bound manuals. These are very useful for binding together short length texts that will allow them to lay flat and be stacked without any issues.
For a product that will last a long time and stand up to repeated wear, we recommend the perfect bound manual. These are hardcover manuals with the text glued against the spine. Once created, they look extremely neat and give you a long-lasting product. We find a lot of customers choose this option if they are looking to print their books at low cost. This is a great option as it can be fully customised to your business so you need not worry about whether you’ll receive a professional product.
If you have a very short product that needs binding then a saddle stitched binding may be preferable. This method is more suited to texts with around 64 or fewer pages. This may be well suited for very short technical documents or even handout training manuals for new employees. These perfect-bound manuals can easily be mass-produced if large orders are required.
If a large number of pages need to be bound, such as those in instruction books or HR manuals, then wire bound may be the way to go. These bound instruction books are very durable and, depending on the number of pages needed, will be able to hold all the information you need wire-bound – along with any separator sheets and bookmarks.
Also, due to the materials used in wire bound manuals, compared to perfect bound manuals, these are relatively cheaper to print and come with a faster turnaround. This is useful for companies that required these on short notice.
We also offer leaflet instruction manuals which are a more quick and efficient solution to instruction manual printing and are very cost-effective when compared to the above examples. The process involves printing the information on the chosen size of your leaflet and then folding using a specialist machine that leaves zero creases in the paper.
What Can I Customise On My Instruction Manual?
Depending on your needs, a simple black and white page manual may be sufficient. However, for those printing instruction manuals or instruction books with lots of pages containing lots of graphics, there are many options available.
One of the first decisions to make is the size of the paper you want to be printed on. A common size for documents is A4, for example, if this page was printed off, then an A4 paper size would suit it best.
For smaller items such as brochures, then an A5 paper size may be better suited. This allows for a more compact bound document that is easy to transport and can easily be stored when needed.
Another thing that can be customised on your bound instruction manuals is the paper type. Depending on how it is going to be used, a higher quality type of paper may be more suited. Different types of paper can have different feels, thickness and more importantly weight.
A thicker paper with a greater weight can also aid in helping the manual be more robust and less prone to damage. This is great for instruction manuals that will be used for many years that have to have a high level of durability. These are important things to take into account when choosing an instruction manual printing method.
Some items such as brochures are usually more suited to being printed on glossy paper, whereas a manual that is probably going to pass through many hands doesn’t need to be printed on a more fancy paper.
In fact, some conscientious businesses decide to print manuals that they know will be mass-produced on recycled paper. This is produced by using recycled paper pulp – it may also be bleached using non-polluting chemicals if a ‘perfect white’ page is desired.
If you require a manual printed to be of high-grade professional quality then there is no better company to order from. We are easily able to accept large orders and deliver them on time frames to suit your needs.
Whether or not it is perfect bound manuals, wire bound manuals, leaflet manuals or even instruction books with saddle-stitched binding, we are happy to deliver. Just get in touch today by calling us on 0151 346 1640 or sending an email over to info@pscsystems.co.uk and we’ll respond to your query as soon as possible.
Posted on Thursday, August 1st, 2019 at 10:30 am in .