What Size Paper Should I Use for Digital Forms?

Clients often ask what size paper can be used for printing the Anoto dot pattern for their forms. While the general answer is - any size that paper can be printed - the real answer is that we generally design and print to any standardised paper sizes.

Everyone would recognise the term A4, A3 etc - as these are the global standards for paper sizes (except for America which is still clinging onto the imperial measurements).

The international paper size standard, ISO 216, uses the metric system, where the base format is a sheet of paper measuring 1m² in area (A0 paper size). Successive paper sizes in the series A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7 and A8, are defined by halving the preceding paper size parallel to its shorter side. The most frequently used paper size is A4 (210 × 297 mm).

Apart from the A standard, ISO 216 has another variant, the less commonly used B series. These are slightly larger than the A series. The area of B series sheets is the geometric mean of successive A series sheets. So, B1 is between A0 and A1 in size. As a result, B0 has one side measuring 1 metre long and B1 has one side that is a half a metre. A B4 page is 250 x 353mm compared to A4’s 210 x 297mm.

There is also a third series, C, which is closely related but is mostly used for envelopes and has it’s own standard - ISO 269. C4 sized envelopes will accommodate an A4 page.

For forms and reports the most common sizes are A4 & A5. However we often find that companies that do reporting and inspections often have the need for something larger than A4 but find A3 a bit too difficult to manage, that is when we would recommend a B4 size sheet be used as an alternative.

When designing forms for an end user to be used with the digital pen & paper, we license a dot pattern `book’ from Anoto. This gives us a large section of the entire unique dot pattern which is physically enough dot pattern space to accommodate 100 A4 pages. Using the methodology of each A series page being exactly half of it’s predecessor, this would mean that we physically have enough dot pattern space to create 50 x A3 pages, 25 x A2 pages, 12.5 x A1 pages and 6.25 x A0 pages.

Below is a comparison chart of the different paper sizes (courtesy of Wikipedia).

Click to Enlarge.