Lesson 1, Part II: A New Leaf

I'm always discovering something new when I help my photographer friends wade through the design process. Today, as I was reading through an album maker's design spec information, I discovered a term that should have been a part of Lesson 1, which was -- leaf or leaves. I've heard people use this term before, primarily in publishing and less in design, but I haven't heard it recently. So what exactly is a leaf?

A leaf refers to the physical sheet that is turned when you flip through an album. It is made up of two sides or two pages. So now for the trick question - how many spreads are in a leaf?

Answer: A leaf is made up of two half spreads!

So why would someone use leaf vs. spreads? It probably depends on their background and whether they are referring to a design element (which would spreads) or a publishing term (which would use leaf). Either way, it's important to know how to differentiate them so you don't accidentally end up with the wrong number of ... whatever that album maker calls it.