PRINTING TERMS: BLEED BY RUSH HOUR PRINTING AND GRAPHICS

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PRINTING TERMS: BLEED BY RUSH HOUR PRINTING AND GRAPHICS

If your business requires a lot of printing, then the term bleedis another one of those printing terminologies that you need to know about. A bleed is simply an extension of your design that goes beyond the actual border of the paper. However, during the printing process, majority of it is clipped off which raises the question of why it is necessary at all. What should be appreciated is that, for instance, pre-cut A5 paper cannot be used when printing a batch of A5 leaflets. As a matter of fact, running large rolls of wide paper into their pool jobs and pressers is cheaper and more efficient. This actually means that your flyers might only occupy a certain area on a meter-wide ream, thus bringing the need to cut out your design and making the whole bleed aspect necessary. 

The cutting process is never exact with a 1-2mm tolerance; this margin of error is why the idea of bleed comes in to account for it. An example of this can be seen here:

                           

 In the example above, you can see the flyer has been printed without employing the use of bleed and the clipping process is messed up (but within its tolerance) thus leaving a disagreeable white line down the side on the finished product. Without the margin of error that bleed provides, the clipping process was done too far and into the actual design. No matter the size of paper being printed, the standard bleed size should be 3mm. The following figure is how the finished should look like:

HOW IS BLEED ADDED TO THE ARTWORK?

It is always simpler when a graphic designer is helping you out to tell him to use bleed since the designer is more experienced and has the technical know-how on how to apply them. However, if you are doing the design work by yourself, programs such as Publisher, Photoshop and InDesign allow you to adjust your image’s ‘canvas size’. Therefore, make sure that your canvas size includes a bleed when you start designing. Also, all major design programs have smart guides but for more help, Google can always come in handy. 

Always take caution and remind your designers to include bleed in the work since it can lead to a completely wasted budget for printing and make you a very unhappy customer. At Rush Hour Printing and Graphics, we will always let you know when bleed on your artwork is unnecessary but where it is needed, we will always apply the bleed without the need to be reminded, whether you don’t know how to apply it, have forgotten to apply it or even when you are in a hurry. Therefore, get exactly what you want with the inclusion of bleed at RHPG. You can also give us a call every time you are working on a design and you need help. 

You can also have a look at our handy design templates where you will find downloadable PDFs specifically scaled for each paper size we have on offer. They also include dotted lines that show the “safe zone” where the bleed needs to stretch and your content won’t get clipped off. You can follow those guidelines and you will never go wrong.

As an added bonus, the following table shows you the bleed measurements that can come in handy in your design, including for individual pages of magazines, booklets and brochures.

Paper Size	Finished Paper Size (cm)	Paper Size with Bleed (cm)
Business Cards (standard)	8.5 x 5.5	9.1x6.1
A7	10.5 x 7.4	11.1 x 8
A6	14.8 x 10.5	15.4 x 11.1
A5	21 x 14.8	21.6 x 15.4
A4	29.7 x 21	30.3 x 21.6
A3	29.7 x 42	42.7 x 30.3
A2	42 x 59.4	60 x 42.6
A1	59.4 x 84	84.6 x 60
A0	84 x 118.8	119.4 x 84.6
DL	21 x 9.8	21.6 x 10.4