Did you find part two interesting? Maybe it was a little too graphic (after all, we are discussing blood, here!) but it has to be talked about in an article like this. Now, onto another topic which won't be so gory. However, we are still talking about guillotine blades. In the previous article, I'd mentioned that the third most commonly made mistake is similar to the second: critical content is too close to the final trim.

In the preceding article, bleed was described as any object which is used as a background cause and circulates right to the boundary of a paper.

The remainder of the page can be collectively identified as critical content. To reiterate, anything other than the background image or graphic can be put into this category. This includes all text, headers, graphics, logos, links or whatever you decided was necessary to get your message across.

Remember how we talked about how guillotines and book cutters don't cut every sheet in the exact position? Physically the paper reacts to the pressure applied during the cutting process. Bleed compensates for if the sheet is cut a little bigger than normal.

If you place your 'critical content' too close to your final trim, it is possible that the blade might cut closer than it usually does. If this happens, you might cut into text, logos, and other content that is critical.

The aesthetic look of the product will appear as if it has been trimmed too closely if it is not cut off but is quite close (within 1 to 2 mm).

The Solution? Critical content needs to be in at least 5mm from the products final trim. You need to use 'margins' to guide you when your placing your graphics and text. This is for magazines, brochures, business cards, stationary and any other printed product.

If your producing a thick book, you'll need to make the distance from the spine quite a bit more than 5mm, probably more like 15-20mm. You'll also need to ensure that you have 'facing pages' settings switched on so that an odd numbered pages will have the spine on the left and even numbered pages will have the spine on the right.

The top, bottom, and right (opposite the spine) should have a white space of no less than 5-10mm between the text and the edge of the paper in order to have a consistent look.