Portfolio Printing
The right portfolio of work can play an essential role in your success as a fine artist, sculptor, photographer, graphic designer, conceptual architect, or other independent creative. A professional presentation portfolio is more than a collection of images; it’s an ambassador for your unique style and personality, and it needs to highlight the very best of your work and show it off to advantage. It must captivate, and be eloquent and convincing.
At QinPrinting, we love developing powerful portfolios for creative artists, designers, and other creatives—amateur or professional—with stunning imagery beautifully reproduced in the finest materials. 25 years of consistent success in the industry, a knowledgeable and sensitive team, state-of-the-art technology, and unbeatable customer service maintains our worldwide reputation in the creative industry. Let us help you create a portfolio that’s both stunning to look at and makes a credible statement about your work.
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Custom Portfolio Printing Costs
At QinPrinting, we help creatives of all disciplines to print portfolios of the highest professional quality. But we know that many upcoming artists and creatives have only a limited budget at their disposal. That’s why we do everything possible to deliver exceptional portfolios at prices to suit every pocket. Whether you’re an independent artist printing a portfolio for self-promotion or an established professional planning to elevate your work further, we can help you realize your ambitions without breaking the bank.
You can get an insight into the cost of printing a custom portfolio from our at-a-glance price charts. Most offset printing services have a minimum print order of 500 or even 1,000 units. But we know that excludes many deserving creatives, so we offer a minimum order quantity (MOQ) of just 100 copies and still with a helpful price tag. Still, the more copies of your portfolio that you order at one time, the less you pay per unit.
Paperback Portfolio Printing Price Chart (8.5” x 11”)
All prices listed in USD
| Quantity | 100pcs | 500pcs | 1000pcs | 2000pcs | 5000pcs | 10000pcs | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
- Please note that all prices are EXW our facility and do not include shipping costs.
- Cover: 250 gsm / 92 lb coated cover paper with matte lamination
- Interior: 128 gsm / 87 lb coated text paper, full color printing
- Sewing and perfect binding
Hardcover Portfolio Printing Price Chart (8.5” x 11”)
All prices listed in USD
| Quantity | 100pcs | 500pcs | 1000pcs | 2000pcs | 5000pcs | 10000pcs | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
- Please note that all prices are EXW our facility and do not include shipping costs.
- Cover: 157 gsm / 58 lb coated cover paper with matte lamination wrapped on 2.5 mm thickness greybeard
- End sheets: 140 gsm / 95 lb uncoated text paper, blank
- Inner: 157 gsm / 106 lb coated text paper
- Full color printing
For a quote specific to your needs, try our helpful online Printing Cost Calculator. Just fill in the form and click for an instant price! Have questions? Then get in touch and one of our enthusiastic in-house team members — not a robot or a dozy call center operator! — will be delighted to help.
Common Portfolio Sizes
What size you choose to print your portfolio depends a lot on the photographs or art reproductions you include, the number of images, the text, layout and orientation, and so on. A landscape-oriented portfolio, say, of full-color art photography will be larger than a portfolio made for a boutique artisan jeweler which you’d expect to have a smaller, more intimate format suggestive of the qualities of handmade crafts.
- Common sizes for many of the portfolios we print are 8.5″ by 11″, 5.5″ by 8.5″, 148 mm x 210 mm, 6″ by 9″ and 9″ by 6″.
Smaller sizes are a good idea if you need to mail out a lot of copies. Larger sizes make a stronger impression. But you’re not limited to the suggestions above by any means. At QinPrinting, we specialize in creating totally individual, unique, custom portfolios in any size or format that’s right for your work and aims. Just consider that extensive customization leads to higher costs and often a slower turnaround because of the additional pre-press and setup work. But for many artists and other creatives, the investment in creating something truly exceptional proves to be worthwhile. It’s up to you!
Portfolio Paper Options
With a portfolio, the images and photographs are the obvious focus of attention, even if you include some explanatory text. So, we advise to print your portfolio on gloss or matte art paper to get optimal artwork reproduction. Gloss and matte have surfaces perfect for vibrant color or black-and-white printing that render artwork and photos faithfully with fine color, crisp contrast, and amazing detail. Gloss paper is essential for a portfolio which has full-color spreads and primarily photographic images, whereas those with more text may benefit from matte paper. Matte paper still gives you eye-catching color or black-and-white reproduction but makes accompanying pages of text easier on the eye.
You’ll need two paper specifications for your portfolio: one for the inside pages and one for the cover. If you’re going for a luxury, high-end look with hardcover binding, add end papers, either using the same paper as the interior, or heavier colored or textured paper, for example.
Paper Stock for Portfolios
Sewn perfect binding—a style of paperback binding which can lay open with the pages flat without breaking the spine—is a popular choice for high-quality portfolios. This binding style needs the spine to be at least 3 mm thick. Standard perfect binding, saddle-stitching and spiral binding are other options. Clients may also choose hardcover binding, especially for a super-professional, high-end look and feel. We recommend a paper weight of 157 gsm / 106 lb or 200 gsm / 135 lb gloss art paper for the interior pages. It’s beautiful to see and touch, faithfully reproduces your original photography, and has good durability.
Cover Paper
- 200 gsm / 74 lb gloss cover paper
- 250 gsm / 92 lb gloss cover paper
- 300 gsm / 111 lb gloss cover paper
- 350 gsm / 129 lb gloss cover paper
- 200 gsm / 74 lb matte cover paper
- 250 gsm / 92 lb matte cover paper
- 300 gsm / 111 lb matte cover paper
Interior Paper
- 105 gsm / 71 lb coated text paper
- 128 gsm / 86 lb coated text paper
- 157 gsm / 106 lb coated text paper
- 200 gsm / 135 lb coated text paper
Hardcover Paper
- 157 gsm / 58 lb coated cover paper wrapped on 2 mm grey board
- 157 gsm / 58 lb coated cover paper wrapped on 2.5 mm grey board
- 157 gsm / 58 lb coated cover paper wrapped on 3 mm grey board
- Other paper, vinyl, or leatherette wrapped on grayboard
Bindings for Portfolios
While we’ll make your portfolio to any specifications you choose, any shape and size you like, the choice of binding matters, too, because it alters the appearance and durability of your finished product. Let’s introduce the most common, professional-looking options. You can open all the following bindings flat.
We use this binding style for standard paperback portfolios. We collate the interior pages into a block, glued together, and then glued into a wrap-around cover made of heavier art paper or lightweight card stock. For portfolios with a higher page count, this is a great option.
We use this binding style for a lot of portfolios we print. We collate the interior pages into sets called signatures, which are then sewn together and fixed into a wrap-around cover made of heavier art paper or lightweight card stock. For portfolios with a moderate page count that needs to lay flat, this is a great option.
To saddle stitch your portfolio, we fold the printed interior sheets and stack them inside the cover sheet before stapling them together down the curved edge. Saddle stitch is only possible with a page count divisible by four, up to a maximum of 64 pages. But to make sure the catalog is neat and lies flat, we recommend a limit of 48 pages or fewer for this style of binding.
This binding is another popular choice for portfolios destined to “do the rounds” of potential clients, for its practicality and flexibility. We punch or drill holes into the pages down one side and then bind them with a plastic coil which spirals through the holes. We crimp the coil at both ends so the pages don’t come loose. You can turn the pages of a spiral-bound book through 360° and also lay the open portfolio completely flat. We can laminate the pages to make them extra-resistant to UV light.
In this binding, we organize the interior pages into signatures which are then printed, cut, and sewn, and glued into a hard casing covered by a printed sheet which forms the cover. This binding is the most durable and high-end, especially if you add a dust jacket, end sheet papers, and a marker ribbon, for example.
Whichever binding style you choose, we like to make it easy for you to design your portfolio. So, you can use one of our ready-made design templates if you like. And please ask us for paper samples. We’ll be happy to send them to you in the mail at no extra charge.
Portfolio Design and Artwork Tips
No matter if you’re designing your portfolio yourself or outsourcing to a professional, third-party graphic designer, you need to understand how to get all your files “print ready”. You’ll need at least a basic understanding of bleed zones, safety areas, trim lines, and borders, for example, and check that the image resolution and the color space are all correct. With that in mind, here are a few helpful tips to help you when you’re preparing your portfolio for the printer.
Export your files as vectors in PDF format for the best results. Our recommended software options for portfolio design are Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign. These will also allow you to convert your color space from RGB to CMYK which you will need to do for offset printing.
If you can’t deliver vectors — say, if you’re exporting bitmaps from Photoshop — then make sure the resolution is at least 300 DPI. With vectors, you needn’t worry about resolution, but all other images must have a high definition to tolerate resizing without becoming fuzzy and “pixilated”.
You’ll need to add a “bleed zone” of 3 mm around all your pages. A bleed is an extended zone at the periphery of a photo, which falls outside the area that your finished page will cover. Once we’ve printed your pages, we’ll cut them to the exact size needed for your portfolio format. This “bit extra” gets cut off and makes sure that the finished image fills the page with none of it being lost.
Inside your bleed zone, don’t forget to mark the “trim lines”. These will define the final dimensions of the finished page. Make sure that any necessary elements of your images stop at least 10 mm short of the trim line.
If a photo crosses over two pages in a “spread” make sure that nothing essential—like the subject’s face or other important details—lie along the center crease.
For a spiral bound portfolio, leave an added margin of at least 15 mm on the edge that we’ll bind the portfolio to allow for the holes.
If you engage a professional designer to create your files, they should know what’s needed to prepare “print ready” files. But if you’re working “DIY” with design software for the first time, these are the crucial tips to consider before you send us your files. The responsibility for sending “print ready” files is yours. But please don’t worry! We’re happy to “hold your hand” each step of the way, explain what’s required, liaise with your designer if you have one, and manually check everything ourselves to make sure it all goes smoothly and you end up with a perfect print edition of your portfolio.
To learn more about preparing your artwork, photographs, text, and layout for printing, please check out our Pre-press Artwork information page.
Let’s Talk!
If you’re an independent creative professional or work for an agency or corporation and you want to print a gorgeous portfolio of unparalleled beauty and at an astonishingly accessible price, we should talk. Get in touch today to chat through your needs or to ask for a no-obligation quote. We can’t wait to help you make your portfolio a masterpiece!