And we're back! Yes, we're knuckling down into the second Most Common Design Problem. In fact "Knuckling down" may not be that far off topic! Cause we're gonna talk about drawing some blood...

Or more accurately "bleeding your document"!

Design Problem #2 is "No Bleed in the Document"!

You mean I gotta give blood to get a print job out? Yes we know, some of the terms in the industry can be pretty unusual! When we talk about bleeding your document, it means when the background graphic or image 'bleeds' over the edge of the page. It's to allow for the cutting tolerance of equipment.

Guilotines and Book Cutters (regardless what brand or how expensive they are) can't cut every sheet in exactly the same position. Variations occur. To compensate for this variation we bleed the background over the edge of the document, so that if it cuts a little bigger than the finished size you won't get the dodgy result of 'white paper' on the edge of it!

So how to do it?

Now if you have a document which has a background that you wish to run right to the edge of the paper, you will need to make the background go even further past the edge of the document. It needs to be at least 3-5mm. If it's a business card or brochure 3mm is fine, but if it's a magazine it should be 5mm. 5mm would be fine for all products. (Better to be safe than sorry!)

Remember that this is for EVERY edge of the paper! So you would have 5mm going past the TOP of your document, 5mm going past the BOTTOM of your document, 5mm going past the LEFT SIDE of your document, 5mm going past the RIGHT SIDE of your document.

Child's play huh?

Yeah we think so! But weirdly enough many people overlook it or misunderstand it.

But you're now a member of the 'informed'! (wink, wink, nod, nod!)

I'll give you a hint what the next article is...It's opposite to what bleed is....