Funeral Program Printing

How many to print

Start with the number of people you expect. The funeral home can usually give you a reasonable estimate from the visitation and from services they have run for similar families; if they offer a number, take it.

Then divide roughly in half. Couples share a program, families share a program, and a stack of them goes home untouched. One per two adults is the working ratio most funeral directors use.

Then add spares, and add more than feels sensible. Twenty-five to fifty extra covers the people who take one home for a neighbor, the grandchildren who each want one, and the relatives who could not travel and will be sent one with a thank-you note later.

Keep the PDF after the service. Families often want another dozen weeks later, and a print shop can run a small reprint from the same file without you rebuilding anything. If you built the program in Reposa, a purchased project can be reopened and downloaded again for twelve months through the link we email you. Keep your own copy of the PDF as well.

Paper: weight, finish and color

US paper weights are confusing on purpose. Bond, text and cover weight are three separate scales, each measured on a different size of sheet. So 80 lb text and 80 lb cover are nothing alike, cover being much thicker, while the 28 to 32 lb paper sold for home printers is bond, and weighs about the same as 70 to 80 lb text. What follows is what each one feels like in the hand.

Finish

Matte or uncoated is the default and the right answer almost every time. It reads well in low light, takes a pen if someone wants to write a name on it, and does not glare.

Linen or laid texture looks formal and has a quiet advantage: the texture hides the slight unevenness of home printing. Photographs come out a little softer.

Glossy makes photographs sharper and everything else worse. It reflects the overhead lights in a church, collects fingerprints in an afternoon, and cannot be written on. Skip it unless the program is mostly photographs.

Pre-printed border paper sold as funeral program paper works, but the alignment has to be exact, and one paper jam ruins sheets that cost several times what plain stock costs. Test with plain paper first, then feed the good stock ten sheets at a time.

Color

Soft ivory or cream is forgiving. It warms up a home printer’s flat blacks and looks intentional. Bright white makes photographs sharper and text crisper. Both are correct; pick whichever matches the design and buy one pack, not two.

Printing at home

A hundred bi-fold programs on a home printer is a real evening of work Call it an hour and a half with jams, and more on an inkjet with a full-color cover. It is entirely doable. These are the steps in the order that saves the most reprinting.

1. 1

   Export a PDF and print from the PDF

   Not from Word, not from Google Docs. A PDF locks the fonts and the spacing in place. Open the PDF first and look at every page before it goes anywhere near the printer.

2. 2

   Set scaling to Actual Size

   In the print dialog, find the scaling option and set it to Actual Size or 100 percent. Fit to Page shrinks the sheet by a few percent, which moves the fold line off center and is behind most crooked programs.

3. 3

   Get the double-sided flip right

   Choose two-sided printing. If the second side comes out upside down, change the flip setting from long edge to short edge, or the reverse. Do not try to reason it out. Print one copy each way on scrap paper and keep the one that works.

4. 4

   Print one, fold it, read it aloud

   Every single time. Check the date, the day of the week, the start time, the venue, and every name. Read it to another person if there is one awake. This four-minute step is the difference between one wrong copy and two hundred.

5. 5

   Load heavy paper in small stacks

   Twenty sheets at a time on 80 lb text, ten on 65 lb cover. Fan the stack before loading. Most jams happen because someone filled the tray.

6. 6

   Watch the ink

   A dark full-page cover photo drains an inkjet cartridge fast. If you have one cartridge and a hundred programs to print, either buy a spare before the stores close or set the cover photo smaller. A laser printer will not have this problem.

One limitation to design around: home printers cannot print to the edge of the paper. Expect about a quarter inch of unprintable margin on every side. Rather than fighting it, make the white border part of the design. Centered type inside a clean margin looks deliberate. The size guide has the safe margins for each format.

Printing at a shop

Once you pass about a hundred and fifty copies, or the moment folding starts to feel like a second job, a shop is worth it. There are four realistic options.

Office-supply store print counters are the middle ground: same-day black and white is usually possible, color often within a day, and folding is offered at some locations and not others. Ask about folding before you commit, because hand-folding two hundred programs in a parking lot is a memory nobody needs.

Online printers produce the nicest results and the highest risk. Production plus shipping rarely beats three days, and a delayed package is unrecoverable. Only use one if the service is more than a week away, and pay for tracked delivery.

What to bring or send

On price, expect color to cost several times what black and white costs per printed side, and folding to be charged either per piece or as a setup fee. Ask for the total before they run it. Many shops will quote a lower price if you print black and white on a colored or textured stock, which often looks better than mediocre color anyway.

Getting the file right

Most printing problems are file problems, and they are all avoidable in about ten minutes.

Color mode is worth one sentence and no more: shops accept ordinary RGB files and convert them. Deep blacks and bright reds shift a little in conversion. It is not worth losing an hour over this week.

If you are still building the file, the walkthrough for making a program covers layout, and the program templates produce a print-ready PDF with the bleed, imposition and margins already set, which removes most of this list.

Folding, scoring and stapling

Folding is the part families underestimate. Two hundred bi-folds takes two people about an hour, and the last fifty are always worse than the first fifty.

Score before you fold anything heavy

On 65 lb cover and above, a fold made without scoring cracks along the crease and the ink flakes. Scoring means pressing a groove along the fold line first. Lay a ruler along the line and run the back of a butter knife or the rounded end of a spoon down it, firmly, once. Then fold.

Letter paper usually has its grain running the long way, which means folding a program in half is a fold across the grain and comes out slightly rough. On 80 lb text you will not notice. On card stock you will, and scoring is what fixes it.

Fold cleanly

Line the corners up first, hold them, then press the crease from the middle outward with a bone folder, the edge of a credit card, or the back of a spoon. Pressing from one end pushes the corners out of alignment.

Set up an assembly line

Three people is the right number: one lines up and creases, one presses and stacks, one checks that every copy is right way up and puts them in boxes of fifty. It is a good job to hand to relatives who keep asking what they can do, and it is the kind of quiet, useful work people are glad to be given.

Stapling a booklet

Booklets are saddle-stitched: two staples through the fold, roughly a third of the way in from the top and bottom. A long-reach stapler does this properly and can often be borrowed from a church or school office. Without one, open a regular stapler flat, lay the folded booklet on a folded magazine or a mouse pad, press the staple through, and fold the legs down with a spoon.

If you are short on time

It is nine at night, the service is at eleven tomorrow, and there are a hundred and forty programs to make. This is the version that works.

And the thing worth saying plainly: you are allowed to do less than you think. Guests hold the program for forty minutes and keep it because of whose name is on it, not because of the paper weight. A single sheet with the name, the dates, the order of service and one line of thanks is a complete, dignified program. Nobody has ever left a funeral disappointed by the printing.

If you find a mistake after printing

Sort it by what it changes. A wrong cemetery, a wrong start time, or a misspelled family name affects what people do, and is worth fixing. Reprint if there is time, and if there is not, write the correction on the top copy and tell the greeters to say it at the door. A missing middle initial, a small typo in the obituary, or a hymn listed in the wrong order changes nothing. Leave it. You will notice it every time you look at the program for the rest of your life, and no one else ever will.