Custom

Notebooks, Pads & Journals

Paper that takes a pen without ghosting, bindings that stay open on a desk, and covers with your name on them – notebooks people keep using after the first week.

See all your notebook and pad printing options

Wire-bound notebooks, journals, conference pads, registers and planners, built around how each one will be written in.

Keep meeting notes and training materials organized with custom Conference…

Stay on top of your schedule with custom diaries and…

Keep notes and reminders organized with custom notepads and desk…

Maintain clear and organised records with custom registers and log…

Write down your thoughts, ideas and daily reflections with custom…

Keep your notes, ideas, and daily tasks in one place…

Formats

All of these are the same three parts in different combinations: a cover, a text block and a binding. What changes is how the book behaves when someone actually tries to write in it.

Wire-bound notebooks

Bound on a metal coil so the book opens completely flat and folds back on itself. The format that actually gets used on a desk, on a clipboard or standing up on site, and our standard for branded notebooks.

Wire-bound journals

The same binding with a heavier printed cover, rounded corners and a thicker text block. It gives you a journal that lies flat at any page, which a glued or cased book never does.

Conference and training pads

Wire-bound pads with printed agenda, worksheet or note pages inside. Cheaper per head than most conference giveaways and considerably more likely to be used on the day.

Notepads and desk pads

Sheets glued at the head with a stiff chipboard back, so each page tears away cleanly. Branded desk pads, to-do pads, order pads and meeting pads all use this construction.

Registers and log books

Wire-bound books with printed column headings and numbered pages, for attendance, visitors, stock movement, complaints and daily production records.

Diaries and planners

Dated year planners, weekly diaries and undated planners, wire-bound with a printed cover. The standard corporate gift, and the one that keeps a brand on a desk for twelve months.

Binding styles, and which ones stay open

We bind with wire, and that is a deliberate position rather than a limitation. The binding decides more about a notebook than the cover does, and whether it lies flat is the difference between a book that gets used and one that gets closed and put aside.

  • Wire binding opens completely flat and folds back on itself, so it works on a crowded desk, on a clipboard or standing up on site. The binding takes a punched margin, so leave clearance on the inner edge.
  • Glued and stitched spines do not lie flat. Perfect binding gives you a printable spine and a tidy shelf look, and in exchange the reader has to hold the book open. For a notebook, that is the wrong trade.
  • Page count is flexible. Wire binding takes any number of leaves up to the coil size, unlike stitched books which have to run in multiples of four.
  • Covers stay flat too. A printed card cover on a wire-bound book folds back with the pages instead of fighting them.

If you specifically need a glued spine or a cased hardcover, say so and we will tell you honestly that it is not something we produce.

Sizes

Sizes below are the finished trimmed book.

  • A5, 148 x 210 mm – the most ordered size by a distance. Enough room to write properly, small enough to carry, and it fits every laptop bag.
  • A4, 210 x 297 mm – for registers, ledgers, project books and anything with columns or drawings.
  • B5, 176 x 250 mm – between the two, and a good size for academic and technical notebooks.
  • A6, 105 x 148 mm – pocket notebooks and small giveaways.
  • Desk pad, 210 x 148 mm or 297 x 105 mm – landscape formats that sit beside a keyboard without taking the whole desk.
  • Register, A4 or foolscap – wire-bound with printed columns and numbered pages.

Custom sizes are available, and square formats work well for premium journals. Tell us the finished size and page count and we will confirm how it cuts from a sheet, since some sizes waste far more paper than others.

Choosing the inside paper

This is where cheap notebooks give themselves away. The cover is what people see in the shop; the paper is what they judge after the first page.

  • 70gsm – the standard economy sheet, fine for pencil and ballpoint. Gel pens and anything with a wet ink will ghost through to the reverse, so the back of each page becomes unusable.
  • 80gsm – the sensible minimum for a branded notebook. Handles ballpoint and most gel pens cleanly and costs very little more across a run.
  • 100gsm and above – for premium journals and anything likely to meet a fountain pen or a marker. Noticeably more opaque, and the page feels substantial under the hand.
  • Ruling options – lined at 7 mm or 8 mm spacing, plain, dotted grid, squared graph, or a custom ruling with your own columns, headers and boxes. Dotted grid has become the default request for planners because it works for both writing and sketching.
  • Print the ruling in grey, not black. A light grey or tinted rule guides the hand without competing with what is written on top of it.
  • Page count and spine. Page count is counted in leaves times two: a 100-leaf notebook is 200 pages. Spine thickness follows from the count and the paper weight, and we calculate it before the cover artwork is finalised.
  • Custom inner pages – an index, a year calendar, contact pages, conversion tables, safety guidelines, a price list or a product reference. These cost almost nothing to add and they are the reason a notebook gets kept.

Covers and branding

How your name goes on the cover matters more than most people expect. We print covers rather than stamping them, so the design does the work: a strong mark on a coloured stock, a full-bleed image, or a restrained logo on plain card.

Printed card cover

300 to 350gsm card printed edge to edge in matte or glossy. The most flexible option, because photography, patterns and full-colour artwork all print exactly as designed.

Coloured and kraft covers

A solid coloured or natural kraft cover with a single ink colour on it. Restrained, and it reads as considered rather than cheap, which suits a corporate gift.

Heavy 400gsm covers

A stiffer cover for books that live on a desk for a year. It protects the text block and keeps the coil from bending in a bag.

Die-cut covers and windows

Cutting is digital, so a shaped cover, a rounded corner or a window cut through to the first page all cost the same as a plain rectangle.

Printed inner pages

An index, a year calendar, contacts, conversion tables, a price list or safety guidelines. These cost almost nothing to add and they are the reason a notebook gets kept.

Rounded corners and punched holes

Rounded corners stop pages dog-earing in a bag, and a punched hole takes a tag or a lanyard. Both are cut in the same pass as the outline.

Branding a notebook so it gets used, not stored

A branded notebook is unusual among printed items: its value depends entirely on whether the person keeps using it. A notebook used daily for a year puts your name in front of someone hundreds of times. The same notebook in a drawer does nothing at all, and it cost you the same.

  • Keep the outside restrained. A small printed logo in one corner is worn comfortably in a client meeting. A cover printed like an advertisement is not, and it goes in the drawer.
  • Put the loud version inside. Your services, branches, contact details and credentials belong on the inside front or back cover, where they are seen by the owner every time the book opens and by nobody they are trying to impress.
  • Add something genuinely useful to the first pages. A year calendar, a contacts page, unit conversions, a size chart, your product range or an emergency numbers page. This is what converts a giveaway into a reference the person cannot replace with any other notebook.
  • Leave a name and phone line on page one. Notebooks get lost, and a filled notebook is worth returning. The line costs nothing and it keeps your book in circulation.
  • Spend on the inside before the outside. Better paper and a few genuinely useful reference pages beat an expensive-looking cover on a book nobody opens twice.
  • Match the size to the use. A5 for meetings and travel, A4 for site and technical work, pocket A6 for anything carried on a person all day.
  • Do not date it unless you must. An undated planner is usable whenever it is handed over. A dated diary given out in March has lost a quarter of its life before it starts.

Urdu and bilingual notebooks and books

There is one structural difference here that does not apply to any other printed item: an Urdu book opens from the other side.

  • Right-to-left binding. An Urdu notebook, diary or register is bound on the right edge and read from what an English reader would call the back. Tell us at the order stage, because it changes the binding edge, the cover layout and the page sequence of the whole book.
  • Bilingual books need a decision, not a compromise. Either bind English and flip the book for the Urdu section, which is common in dual-language diaries, or keep one direction and set Urdu within it. Mixing binding logic halfway through produces a book nobody can navigate.
  • Send Urdu as outlines or a print-ready PDF with fonts embedded. Nastaliq letters join and reshape, so live text in a font we do not hold will break apart across a whole text block.
  • Working in InPage? Export to PDF and send that rather than the .inp file. If you only have the InPage layout, send it and we will rebuild it as a print file.
  • Ruling spacing has to be wider for Urdu. Nastaliq baselines slope and the script needs vertical room, so 8 mm or 9 mm ruling suits Urdu writing where 7 mm suits English.
  • Keep numbering, dates and figures in standard numerals in invoice and receipt books, whatever language the rest of the form is in, because those entries are logged and audited.

Hijri dates alongside Gregorian in diaries and planners are straightforward to include. Sindhi and Pashto follow the same rules as Urdu.

Why businesses print their notebooks with Zarvex

Notebooks are judged by the page, not by the cover, and the parts that decide that are specified before printing rather than fixed afterwards.

Paper matched to the pen

We will tell you when 70gsm is going to ghost with the pens your people actually use, and what the upgrade costs across the run. It is usually less than the cost of a notebook nobody writes on both sides of.

Binding chosen for how it opens

We bind with wire because it lies flat, and we will tell you plainly that glued spines and cased hardcovers are not something we produce. Better an honest no than a book that will not stay open.

Spine and gutter calculated for you

Spine width from your page count and paper weight, and enough inner margin that writing does not disappear into the fold. Both are worked out before the cover artwork is finalised, not after.

Numbering and custom ruling

Custom ruling with your own columns and headers, printed inner pages, and sequential page numbering done in the print file. A different name or number on every book costs nothing extra. Quotes are in PKR.

How ordering works

01. Specify the book

Choose a product from the range above, then set the size, page count, inside paper, ruling, binding, cover material and quantity.

02. Send artwork and inner pages

Upload the cover artwork and any inner pages, or send your logo and what you want on the first pages and our designers will build them.

03. Approve the proof

You get a proof of the cover with the calculated spine, plus the ruling and inner pages. Check the binding edge and any numbering range before approving.

04. Print, bind and deliver

Printed, folded, bound, trimmed and boxed, then delivered in Karachi or couriered nationwide. Files and number ranges stay on record for reorders.

Getting your artwork press-ready

A book is several artworks that have to agree with each other: a cover sized around a spine that depends on the page count, and a text block that has to clear the binding.

  • Supply front and back covers as separate pages. Wire binding has no printed spine, so there is no spread to build and no spine width to calculate.
  • Inner margin matters more than the outer one. Allow 12 mm on the binding edge on top of the normal margins, or the punch will cut through your text.
  • Inside pages as single pages in reading order, not as imposed spreads. We handle imposition.
  • Bleed 3 mm on all outer edges of both cover and inner pages, with a 5 mm safe area inside the trim.
  • Ruling can be supplied as vector artwork or specified to us in millimetres. Set rules in a light grey or a tint rather than solid black.
  • Die-cut shapes and windows come as a separate vector path on its own layer in a spot colour named CutContour.
  • Numbered pages: tell us the starting number and leave a clear light box where the number will sit on each page.
  • 300 DPI, CMYK, rich black at C40 M30 Y30 K100, fonts outlined or embedded. Print-ready PDF preferred; we also accept AI, EPS, CDR from CorelDRAW, packaged INDD and layered PSD.

No artwork yet? Send your logo, the size and page count you want and what should go on the inner pages, and our design team will build the cover and the inside before it goes to proof.

Notebooks and pads by trade

How the book is used decides the binding and the paper; what is recorded in it decides whether it needs numbering.

Corporate gifting

Wire-bound diaries and journals with a printed cover, given to clients and staff. Restraint on the cover and useful reference pages inside is what keeps them on a desk rather than in a drawer.

Schools and academies

Branded notebooks, registers, homework diaries and exam pads. Custom ruling with the school name in the header, and wider spacing where the writing is in Urdu.

Traders and distributors

Wire-bound registers, delivery log books and numbered record books, with printed columns and separate number ranges per branch or per vehicle so a document can always be traced back.

Clinics and hospitals

Prescription pads with the doctor’s name, qualifications and registration number, plus patient and date fields. Numbered where the practice wants a record of what was issued.

Restaurants and hotels

Order pads and docket books in duplicate, so one copy goes to the kitchen and one stays at the counter. Room notepads and guest folders in the same branding.

Agencies, events and startups

Wire-o notebooks for conferences, workshops and training, printed with an agenda or worksheet pages inside. Cheaper per head than most conference giveaways and considerably more likely to be used.

Quantities, pricing and reorders

Everything here is printed digitally, so there are no printing plates and no setup charge to spread across the run. A short run is priced fairly rather than carrying the cost of preparing a press, a custom shape or fold adds nothing because cutting and creasing are digital too, and a different name, number or code on every piece costs the same as printing one design repeatedly. Quotes are in PKR.

QuantityCost per piece
25 – 100Highest per piece, though still viable
250Noticeably lower
500Best value on most jobs
1,000 and aboveQuoted per job

Two decisions change the cost more than the quantity does.

  • Page count drives price more than page size. Halving the page count saves far more than dropping from A5 to A6, and most branded notebooks are given away with three quarters of the pages unused. Be honest about how much will actually be written.
  • Undated beats dated for anything held in stock. A dated diary has a shelf life measured in months and becomes worthless afterwards. An undated planner printed in the same quantity can be issued whenever it is needed, so nothing is written off.

For numbered books, decide the range before printing. A range can be continued later, but the same numbers cannot be printed twice, so leave a gap between batches if you expect to reprint a damaged block.

Reorders are simple. Your files, dies and last number used stay on record, so a repeat run continues the sequence and needs no new setup unless the artwork has changed.

Notebook and pad printing FAQs

Runs start at 25 books. Printing and cutting are digital and binding is done here, so there is no plate charge and no tooling, which makes a small run for an event or a client set genuinely affordable. Cost per book falls as the run grows, most noticeably at 250 and 500.

Wire binding, which opens completely flat and folds back on itself. It is what makes a notebook usable on a desk or a clipboard, and it takes any page count rather than multiples of four. Glued perfect binding and cased hardcovers are not something we produce, so if a printable square spine is essential, we are not the right supplier for that job.

70gsm is fine for pencil and ballpoint but will ghost with gel and wet inks, which effectively halves the usable pages. 80gsm is the sensible minimum for anything branded. 100gsm and above is for premium journals and fountain pens. The upgrade costs very little across a run and it is the first thing anyone notices about the book.

Yes. Lined at any spacing, plain, dotted grid, squared, or a fully custom ruling with your own columns, headers, boxes and logos. Inner pages such as an index, year calendar, contacts, conversion tables or a product reference can be added at very little cost, and they are what make a notebook worth keeping.

Pages are counted as leaves times two, so a 100-leaf notebook is 200 pages. Wire binding takes any page count up to the coil size, so you are not tied to multiples of four, and there is no printed spine to calculate a width for.

Yes, printed. A full-colour cover, a strong single mark on a coloured or kraft stock, or a die-cut window showing through to the first page. We print rather than stamp, so there is no die charge and no minimum tied to the design.

Not at the moment. Carbonless sets need collating and padding equipment we do not have, and doing it by hand is slow enough that the price would not be fair to you. Wire-bound registers, log books and numbered record books we do print, and for many uses those do the same job.

Yes, with the doctor’s name, qualifications and registration number printed, patient and date fields, and sequential numbering where the practice wants a record of what was issued. Available as wire-bound pads with numbered pages where a retained record matters.

Yes. Tell us the finished size and page count and we will confirm how economically it cuts from a press sheet, since some sizes waste considerably more paper than others and that shows up in the price.

Yes. Urdu books bind on the right edge and read from the opposite end, so tell us at the order stage because it changes the binding edge, the cover and the page sequence. Use 8 mm or 9 mm ruling for Urdu writing, send Urdu as outlines or a print-ready PDF, and export from InPage to PDF rather than sending the .inp file.

Print-ready PDF is best. Send front and back covers as separate pages and inner pages as single pages in reading order, at 300 DPI in CMYK with 3 mm bleed and fonts outlined. Allow 12 mm inner margin for the binding punch. We also accept AI, EPS, CDR from CorelDRAW, packaged INDD and layered PSD.

Across most of them, and the list keeps growing. The notebooks and pads we print regularly go to corporate gifting, schools and academies, traders and distributors, clinics and hospitals, restaurants and hotels and agencies, events and startups.

The trade matters less than what the job has to do. Two businesses in completely different lines often need the same size, stock and finish, and two shops in the same trade often need entirely different ones. If your line of work is not named above, tell us what the notebooks and pads have to do and where they will be handled, and we will tell you what suits it.

Yes. Orders are couriered anywhere in Pakistan, including Lahore, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan, Peshawar, Hyderabad and Quetta, and delivery within Karachi can be arranged directly. Books are boxed in counted bundles so numbered stock arrives in sequence.

Pick a product from the range above and order on the site, or send your requirement on WhatsApp with the size, page count, paper, ruling, binding, cover and quantity you want, and we will come back with a quote in PKR before anything moves forward.

Ready to print your notebooks?

Pick a product from the range above, or tell us the size, page count and binding you have in mind and send your logo on WhatsApp. We will come back with paper, cover and finishing options and a quote in PKR.