plattformat

Plattformat is a term used in several Northern European languages to denote a flat format, referring to the two-dimensional size and shape of a page, plate, or image used in printing and publishing. The concept distinguishes the overall layout from three-dimensional objects and from non-flat formats. The term can appear in design briefs, metadata for digital documents, and archival descriptions.

In graphic design and publishing, plattformat guides decisions about page margins, typography, columns and fold lines. In printing, it may denote the size of the printing plate or the finished sheet after trimming. In digital workflows, plattformat is used to describe the intended canvas or media size for a file, often alongside considerations of aspect ratio and resolution.

Plattformat is not a universal technical standard. Actual dimensions vary by country, industry, and project. Some contexts align the concept with established paper-size families (for example, ISO sizes) or market-specific formats, but plattformat itself is a qualitative descriptor rather than a fixed set of measurements. The term is most common in Nordic and Central European design and printing discourse, and may appear in catalogs, specifications, and archives to categorize flat, two-dimensional media.

In practice, plattformat serves as a non-numeric descriptor for flat formats used in design, printing, and archiving.