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Tips to Create Professional-Looking Coil Bound Menus

Creating your own menus for a cafe or restaurant isn’t as difficult as you may have thought! All you need is the materials - coils, covers, and a binding machine - and you’re ready to save loads of time and money by making your menus in-house. The best part about binding on your own is that you’re free to make changes in design and layout whenever you like.

Coil bound menu pages are easy to turn and can lay flat on a table or counter while a customer is reading them. It’s possible to incorporate either soft or hard covers with coil binding and pages can be added or omitted from a menu fairly easily. Also, if you’re concerned with cost, some of the materials including the coil binding and the covers can be reused as long as the basic dimensions and design of your menu remain the same. Here are a few suggestions for creating professional grade menus at a fraction of the cost:

Create your menu design and layout.
Unless you have already compiled the information you’ll need for your new menus, begin by developing item descriptions and gathering photographs (only if you intend to include them in your menu). Develop a design you are comfortable with and print a test copy to bind before you make a commitment. For less formal restaurants and cafes, smaller menu dimensions and more pictures are generally accepted and expected from your customers. For formal menus, refrain from using pictures and provide more detailed item descriptions. Dimensions will be important for deciding on a specific binding machine so initial design steps should be taken before you choose an inserter or machine.

Purchase a coil binding machine.
A variety of coil or spiral binding machines are available that have the necessary features to meet your needs. Depending on the coil material you wish to use, plastic or metal, choose the machine that is capable of binding one or the other, or both. Coil and spiral inserters are also an option for those wishing to automate the entire process. These machines are more expensive than a typical coil binding machine, but can greatly reduce the time needed to bind, especially when producing large quantities. Binding machines and inserters have maximum paper capacity as well, in terms of both the number of sheets they can punch and the size of paper they can accommodate for punching and binding. Be certain the machine you choose meets all of the size and material requirements you demand before you purchase!

Decide on the materials you’ll need to finish your menus.
To bind your menus you will have to decide on the color and size of the coils and covers you wish to use to complete your menus. As you’re shopping for these items, be sure to double check the size specifications, compared to the number of pages you’ll be binding, before you purchase either coils or covers. Coils are available in sizes from 1/8” to above 1”, most likely your menu will have a small number of pages and the smallest sized coil will be sufficient. Have an idea about the number of menus you want so you can purchase the necessary amount of coils and covers; plan on picking up a few extra so you have replacements for menus that are lost or damaged.

Binding and finishing your menus.
Now that you’ve decided on a design, a machine, and the materials, you can begin the process of actually binding your menus. Begin by punching and binding the test copy you printed after designing the menu. If you like the way this copy looks after binding continue with the rest of the menus!

A few final tips.
To help your menu pages last longer, consider laminating them. A sufficient laminator can generally be purchased for less than the amount of a coil binding machine and will help your menus last significantly longer. For less formal restaurants especially, laminating pages, as well as pre-designed covers, can dramatically cut costs and provide your menus with a very professional look.

When designing something like a menu, which a number of people will see everyday, it is a good idea to consult a business partner, customer, or friend before deciding on a final design. Often times others will have suggestions to make a design more user-friendly or visually appealing.

Finally, once you have all of the necessary materials, don’t hesitate to redesign your menus and create a new look. Refreshing the style, layout, and items within your menu can attract new customers and add to the excitement surrounding your restaurant.

Video: Reuse Paper, Make a Recycled Green Notebook

A cost-effective reusable, green notebook. It's a great way to make use of all that leftover paper sitting in the wastebasket or recycle bin next to your printer. 

Here's what you'll need:

Dahle Vantage 15E
GBC Comb Bind C110 Manual Binding Machine

8-1/2 x 5-1/2" Book size
15 sheets of scrap paper
Plastic combs (we use 3/8" combs for this project)
Recycled card stock for the front and back cover

Steps:

1.  Cut paper and cover stock in half. According to the size of your notebook, cut the comb to fit. For a half size notebook, you need 9 holes.

2. Using the GBC CombBind C110, or any Comb Binding Machines, set sheet guide to "Letter." Insert paper and make sure it is lined up to the back wall of the binder and the sheet guide.

3. Pull down the lever and set punched paper aside. Repeat with cover.

4. Take plastic comb and place it - open end up - over the teeth.

5. Use right side lever to open the binder to 3/8" (or whatever size combs you are using).

6. Insert the comb into the cover first, face down. Then add pages and back cover, also face down.

7. Use the lever to close the comb, then pull the notebook straight up and off the teeth of the binder.

You're done!

Tips:
To add or remove pages, place the book back onto the binder's teeth, cover down. Open to the appropriate comb size. Remove the back cover and insert more blank sheets.

Try full size, half size, or 1/3 page size notebooks for everything from to-do lists and cookbooks.

Bookbinding at home

I just found a good review of the Rollabind Crafter's Kit over at DIYPlanner. I keep meaning to write about this kit, but they have done such a thorough job at DIYPlanner. It comes with a personal punch and binding disks, and is affordable for binding at home or on smaller projects (1-2 books at a time).

Here's the review:

Got my Rollabind Crafter's kit today! Hooray! I bought it for roughly $10 cheaper than the Rollabind site itself, from a new site called "KeepOnCrafting.Com". They're having a grand opening sale, and with shipping the total cost was just under $49 for the Crafters Kit 500.

On opening the kit, here are my thoughts:

The personal punch is OK, the little alignment gizzy works but it took a minute for me to understand how to operate it. The Rollabind site has photo instructions for it that I read a week or two ago. The alignment thingy does have a paper clamp so your paper stack doesn't wiggle, which works fine for the small amount of paper you can punch. It also has a disc liner-upper that helps you get the punched paper onto the rings. This is helpful and does work. One bummer: you have to fold the ring liner upper out to line up your paper, then tuck it under to punch, then fold it out again to line up the rings. This is not a good workflow. This gizzy really isn't for 'on the fly' use like you'd have in the office adding a new sheet to your ring binder.

The kit itself is not really necessary. The plastic box I saw in the picture had a lid, what I got instead was a drawer organizer with no lid. All the discs were held in the organizer with shrinkwrap. So now I'll have to repackage the discs in little boxes or bags to keep them from escaping, since I don't have a drawer to put the organizer in.

The 120 discs it came with stack up this way: 60 discs of the microscopic size, 20 each in three colors. I got baby blue, baby pink, and black. Also 60 discs of the next size up, 20 of each in three colors. I got black, red, and transparent. There were no samples of any larger sizes at all. So, this package is slightly useful, but may not actually fit the gizmo I wanted to make, which may have as much as an inch of paper to bind. We'll see how it works out, I might separate the components into individual books, not sure. However, I will be able to use all of these teeny discs, because I have come up with a bundle of different ideas for books to bind up--from a gardening log to a wine log to my kids' artwork..

The puncher will punch .020" rigid vinyl, but only just barely. I have a bunch of this stuff lying around from previous projects, and I'm going to use it for covers! Whee! It will punch about 5 sheets of 24lb paper comfortably. I have to line up the puncher twice to do my quarter-letter books, which could make the punching process tedious, but I need to get some mileage on it before I spring $50 for the desktop punch.

I am WAY impressed with how the rings and punched paper interact. I looked at the Rolla notebooks in my local Staples and was totally underwhelmed. The rings fit too tightly in the holes and the notebooks were stiff. Likewise there was a lot of shredded paper around the punches making the situation worse. But this, with the personal punch and my own good paper, is far superior. I am so pleased. I took about 20 pages of scraps, punched them up and bound them in a very short time (with pink microscopic rings) and the book was basically perfect. Easy to move the pages, easy to open and close the book. Awesome. Less than 15 pages, though, is a bit floppy for this kind of binding, even with the microscopic rings. At that point you're probably better off with a staple or stitching.

OK, so final impressions. The personal punch is worthwhile, but you'll get tired of fiddling with the alignment thingy if you have too many pages to punch. You might get more discs for your money with this grouping, but it probably won't be the bunch of rings you'd buy if you picked your own colors. It also might not be the sizes you'd pick.

My suggestion: Get the personal punch if you're doing hipsters or small books. The desktop punch is probably better for the bigger books, higher volume punching, or if you want the flexibility to remove punches in an artistic way. The kit is a nice sampler, but it's definitely not a color scheme for the office unless your office is very creative. :) You might be better off grabbing a few a la carte boxes of rings if you want dignity and sobriety, or if you have bigger stacks of paper in mind.

Anyway, love it! I'm so excited and I can't wait to get my 'hipster' done! And all the other books I've got on my mind now..

shris

See original review at diyplanner.com