What is bleed?

We often get asked what an artwork bleed is. Simply put, it is an area of your image that is outside the final cut of your printed piece. This will allow the printer to be able to guarantee that your printed piece will (if cut a fraction to the left or right) be finished as you envisioned.

Not allowing for bleed may result in your piece having a thin white line (which is actually the card or paper underneath) along one or more of the sides of the piece.

Take a look at the top left section of a business card below.

Note the light area is only used here to illustrate bleed.

The lighter area in the picture above represents the area of bleed (in the case of a business card, this is 3 mm) all around the card.

The darker area represents the finished area of the business card.

Crop marks of a contrasting colour to your artwork need to be shown on your final PDF. In this case we have used white crop marks as the above design is predominantly blue. These are shown in the very top left.

Click here to to see the standard sizes for creating PDF's.

If you are still unsure what bleed is, please call us and we will endeavour to help you.