Bleed, trim and safe zone — worked out for you.

What bleed actually is

Cutting is mechanical, and it moves. A stack of cards shifts a fraction of a millimeter under the blade, so a cut aimed exactly at the edge of your artwork will sometimes land just outside it — and you get a thin white line down one side of the finished piece.

Bleed is the insurance. You extend any background color or image past the finished size, the blade cuts somewhere inside that extra material, and the color runs right off the edge no matter where the cut actually lands.

The three sizes, in plain terms

• Document size — the size you build your file at. Finished size plus bleed on all four sides.
• Trim size — the finished piece. What the customer holds.
• Safe zone — an inset margin from the trim. Text, logos and anything that would look wrong clipped goes inside this line.

How much bleed to use

0.125″ (an eighth of an inch) per edge is the US standard and covers almost everything in this catalog. Metric artwork uses 3 mm, which is near enough the same thing.

Two cases want more. Anything folded, bound or mounted — booklets, presentation folders, mounted board — because the finishing step adds its own variance on top of the cut. And large format, where banners that hem or pole-pocket need extra material to wrap, and the requirement comes from the finishing rather than the cutting.

If you're not sure which applies, send the file over and we'll check it before it goes to press rather than after.

Common ways files come in wrong

• Bleed added, artwork not extended. The document is the right size but the background still stops at the trim line, so the extra space is white. The number has to be matched by actual artwork filling it.
• Text right up against the trim. Technically printable, but a millimeter of drift and it looks like a mistake. That's what the safe zone prevents.
• Crop marks inside the bleed. Marks should sit outside the bleed area, offset, or they can print on the finished piece.
• Borders. A thin border framing a card is the least forgiving design there is — any cut drift makes it visibly uneven on one side. If the design needs a border, make it thick.
• Resolution too low. Bleed dimensions are right, image is 72 DPI. Correct size, soft print.

Questions people ask

Do I need bleed if my design has a white background?

No. If nothing is meant to reach the edge, there's nothing to protect and you can supply at finished size. Bleed only matters where color or imagery runs off the edge.

Is 3 mm the same as 0.125 inches?

Close enough in practice. 0.125″ is 3.175 mm. Either will produce a correct job — use whichever matches the units you're designing in rather than converting and introducing a rounding error.

What DPI should the file be?

300 DPI at finished size for anything held in the hand. Large-format pieces viewed from several feet away are fine at 150 DPI, and a full-size banner file at 300 DPI is enormous for no visible benefit.

Can you just fix my file?

Usually, yes. We check every file before it goes to press, and if the bleed is missing we'll tell you within 24 hours rather than printing it wrong. Email the artwork and we'll look at it.