Designing With Bleed

What is a Bleed?

Full-bleed printing means that you want your piece to be printed without borders from edge to edge. Bleed is that ink that goes beyond the edge of the paper after we trim it to the final size. By extending the ink beyond the trim, it helps compensate for any mechanical tolerances of the printing process, preventing an unwanted white border from showing at the edge.

If you want a background color or image to print to the edge of your page you will need to design your file with a 1/8" bleed on all 4 sides. As an example, if you want a 5x7 full bleed postcard you will need to send us a 5.25x7.25 file.

Professional design software such as Adobe Illustrator or InDesign and Quark have settings for bleed, but consumer software such as Microsoft Word or Powerpoint do not. If you create your file in a consumer software package you may need to include the bleed on your own. Remember, the content in the bleed area will be lost after trimming, so do not include text or any other significant information in this area.

What is the Trim?

Trim is the finished size of the document. The document is cut close to the trim line, but because of the mechanical tolerances involved in printing, the actual cut can happen anywhere between the bleed and the safety margin. This is why it is important to keep your text and important images within the safety margin.

What is the Safety Margin?

The area 1/8" inside the trim is the safety margin. Please make sure no critical images or text are placed in this area. This will ensure that nothing important will get cut off in the trimming process.

A no bleed postcard has a white border around the image.
As long as you leave a 1/8" margin around your content
nothing will get cut off when we trim to size.
Please design your file sized to the trim size, with a 1/8" margin on all 4 sides.

This full bleed postcard will be trimmed on the pink lines.
Anything outside the pink will definitely be cut off.
The green lines show the safety margin. Please don't put any text or
important elements outside the green line to ensure they are not cut off.
Please design your file sized to the trim size with an ADDITIONAL
1/8" bleed on all 4 sides.

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or
Click here if you are not sure what you need, or if you have unusual needs