The definition doesn’t appear in Websters, so you’re right to ask. And the answer we’re going to give you, is that they are whatever you want them to be. Here’s roughly what we think after our 14 years making them:
Jackets – Usually 4panel and up, nice spine thick enough to hold print. The disc can be held with pockets or foam hub, basically anything but a tray - in which case we call it a traypak.
Wallets- same thing. Sometimes people refer to wallets as bifold or trifold, and usually they don’t have spines?
Sleeves?– In our minds these are usually 2pp (2 panel).
While we’re at it, how about covers? In our mind, covers are kind of representative of LP covers, which is a special style like a jacket with a thick spine and maybe an inner sleeve?

Bottom line- you tell us what you want and we can do it. You don’t want to know how many variations of a 4pp jacket we have. Dozens and dozens and dozens….no kidding. We like to customize and think outside the box, so we do.

For 4pp jackets alone, we must have between 50 and 200. There is almost nothing you can’t customize on our jackets. We’ll try to cover some of the most popular options. Please understand that we do not have part numbers and you absolutely do not have to be confined to something you see on our site. Although if you don’t see it here. It probably defies some laws of physics.

Spines

The vast majority of our jackets, wallets, sleeves or whatever you want to call them, do have spines. And as you probably guessed, we have a variety of spine widths too. Considerations might be the thickness of the paper (like fiberboard is really thick) and if you have a foam hub or a booklet inside.

PIPS - Printed Inside Pockets and Spines

Jackets are generally printed one one side of the paper. When that paper is folded up & glued, it forms the inside panels. So what you see on the inside of the spines and pockets is the reverse side of the paper. We do a special trick called PIPS – Printed inside Pockets and Spines. We thought of LIPS, lovely inside pockets and spines, but it was voted out. The other name for it is RIP, reverse inside printing, which is an accurate term but 1) has an unfortunate acronym, and 2) means a lot of other things in the printing world. So…PIPS. This needs to be added to jackets if you want to have that area between the spines, and under the pockets printed. This is something we can help you with on the template.

Note- our traypaks have PIPS included, but not jackets.

Number of Panels

This means how many printed panels, front and back. So count the panels on the inside and double it.
4 panels = a bi-fold, 6panels = a tri-fold, 8panel, 10panel, etc….

These are all examples of 4pp jackets, but you’ll see how they vary:

This is a 6panel jacket:

These are 8panel:

And so forth….just count the panels on the inside and multiple by 2.

Not to make things complex (when we were doing so well keeping it simple too!) but we can also do tear-off panels. These are perforated panels often used for business reply cards or if they are wide, postcards. These tear off panels are often single panel, in contrast to the rest of the panels which are double walled. Oops, complex again, but do do need to know about that too as it affects the look. Back to tear-off panels – these we might denote as a 4pp jacket + a tear off, because it’s a bit different.
What does Double walled mean? In a nutshell, it means that the panels are made by folding over the panels of paper which means you get nice, thick, well folded panels with no rough edges.
EXAMPLE: insert diagram

Double Walled Construction

The opposite is single walled, which isn’t something we normally do, unless there’s a special need. For example, on this title, the church really needed the creative die cut and the best way to achieve this on this die cut was with a single wall.

Wow, where to start. Discs generally go in a pocket or on a foam hub, and booklets in a pocket. But don’t think for a minute that you are limited to one style of pocket. Oh noo. We have an almost infinite variety of pockets; Slot, Slit, Thumbhole, Thumbhole Wide, Thumbhole Deep, Thumbhole Extra Deep, Wide Slot, Half Moon, Diagonal Literature Pocket, Steep Diagonal Literature Pocket, Tube Pocket , Rounded Pockets, Invisible Pockets, Vertical Pockets, (stopping here but there are LOTS more). And they can open out or in or up or down. And the booklets can be glued too.

We don’t mind what you call the pocket style - it’s almost easily to show a sketch or photo. Just how many hourglass & thumbholes & wide thingies can one have? We’ve been tempted to call them sitting crane, and striking serpent and so forth. Let us know and we can do it.

The most common height is roughly 5 inch tall, and roughly 5 inch wide. You know without asking that we have umpteen zillion variations on this. We also have some other distinguishable widths and heights.

5inch tall, but extra wide:

These are so often used for mailers (perfect postcard width), so SEE OUR MAILER PAGE if you want to explore this one in more detail.

~7 inch tall:

SEE TALL JACKETS page to explore more examples

~3 inch Tall – these are especially for mini Discs. And yes, we can make wee little booklets to match. SEE OUR MINI DISC FOLDERS PAGE for more examples

Special Portfolio Size – to hold 8.5 x 11 literature SEE PORTFOLIO PAGE

~10 inch Tall – you might want to check out our MegaTall Traypaks (SEE MEGA TALL PAGE) to see what these look like. We can make these without trays if you like.

Unusual folding – same with these. The Cross and Plus shapes are most often done with trays but can be done with pockets too. Be sure to read about that pesky center panel.
SEE CROSS AND TRAY SHAPE TRAYPAKS

Foam Hubs are another fun way to hold discs. We can do them in black or white foam. You can have some good fun with these:

Well, the USPS likes to make sure packages are firmly sealed. You can either put shrinkwrap on a jacket, or you can consider using a zipper strip. SEE our MAILER PAGE for more examples.
Some key considerations for you are – how will you be doing the addresses?
Handwritten? On sticker or on jacket?
Ink jetted Printed directly on jackets? Or printed labels?
Let us know so we can guide you on the details and help you as much as possible.

We tend to call jackets that have a special zipper pull, mailers. These too come in all kinds of shapes and

Most people are familiar with booklets. Ours are generally full color 4C/4C , they can be stapled or gatefolded, or poster style. And they can be attached in many different ways.

Tube Pockets:

Glued Booklets:

Poster Examples:

 

Perfect Bound Book Examples – 28+ pages. These have thicker cover stock and are perfect bound books.

Do you have your variety jones satiated yet? We have more variety to throw at you.
Our standard paper stock – contains, 20% recycled content. Recommend for special effects printing.
Our Truly Eco paper stock – contains 70-80% recycled content and post consumer waste. A bit softer.
Our fiberboard – lovely unbleached , brownish material, slightly fuzzy texture, uses end of chain material/pulp so very Eco.
Uncoated Papers – for that matte, feel me touch me look.
And we can do all kinds of thickness too. If you need additional choices, ask, but these cover just about everything you might want to create. What doen’t we use? We don’t use individual sheets of paper that you might pick up in a stationary store, for example. We use big rolls of paper.

People often ask us about barcodes. First of all barcodes are free, and when you tell us you want one, we can place it into your art. We purchase a block of barcodes from the United Bar Code Council – about 1000 of them – every year. The codes are then ours to distribute to clients. The bar code’s purpose in life is to provide your title with a unique number. That’s really all. It does start with our name as we purchased it, but when you submit your title for sales in a retail store or online like at Amazon, they’ll take that unique number and have you apply all of your information (and their required info) to it. Our info goes away.

Can you purchase your own bar code through the UBC? Yes, but the cost is about $750 last we heard. It’s probably not worth $750 to do that, but we’ll leave it up to you. No matter where you sell it, they really just want that UBC unique number and you need to fill out their form anyway. But if you have your own bard code, you can absolutely provide it.

We have some fun suggestions for bar code artwork – they need not be boring. See this site for some fun ideas: Barcode Art from Japan - Inventorspot.com
And here’s a few creative ones our own clients did:

We can also do spine tabs, but keep in mind this is not on the artwork so there’s a minor additional charge per unit. We recommend strongly that if you are selling these at a particular store, to check on their policy first. They may have certain requirements.

We can do cd, dvd5, dvd9, dvd10, clear substrate discs, vinyl discs, recordables, mini discs, and even flexible dvds!

We generally do not like to do packaging without the discs, and in general, cringe when asked to do an incomplete packages (without some component). It’s a bit like being your own General Contractor – all the liability falls on you. We really prefer to see it all the way though so we can make sure everything works well together. But if you have a special need, let us know and we’ll try to accommodate as best we can.

Wow can we do slipcases. We can make them any height or width or top loading or side or tube or box…..and slipcases are like icing on a cake

Let’s refer you to some other pages for that if you want to see more.
SEE SLIPCASE SETS

Disc replication projects include CD or DVD manufacturing, printing, packaging, and assembly. Once we know what your spec is, we'll create the templates for your project and send them over to you.

Full Proofing is included — Replicated test discs (fully printed, glass mastered) and color matchprints for printed packaging. Be sure to check out our proofing process page to get a feel for what's involved.