Preparing your files for print might feel like a daunting task, but ensuring the final result aligns with your vision is all about understanding bleeds and borders. You don’t need to be a printing expert, but knowing a bit about print nomenclature, like margins and tolerances, is crucial to ensure your final product is as captivating and inspiring as you imagined. In this article, we’ll break down some essential terms and concepts you’ll come across during the printing process.
Cutting Tolerance
No matter how advanced printing equipment has become, there will always be slight variations when projects are trimmed down. We call this cutting tolerance, and it’s something you can easily manage to make sure it doesn’t mess up your project.
Trim Size
Your project’s trim size simply refers to its intended final size. For instance, if your image is 8.5″ by 11″, then that’s the trim size you’re aiming for. When you’re preparing your image for print, knowing the trim size is a handy reference for setting up bleeds and borders, which we’ll dive into next.
Bleed Zone
The bleed zone is slightly bigger than the trim zone. Anything in the bleed zone will intentionally be cut off during printing. This step is important to make sure your final product doesn’t have any annoying white space or blank areas around the edges.
Safe Zone
Within the bleed zone, you’ll find the safe zone, and this area should be a bit smaller. It’s where you want to place the crucial parts of your design—your text, logos, photos, and so on—so they don’t get chopped off.
Safety Margin
At Presto Page, we keep a safety margin of 0.314 inches. (This is sometimes referred to as an internal bleed margin.) Think of this as the space just inside the trim line, kind of like the border of the safe zone. In simpler terms, it means you should keep all your text at least 0.314 inches away from the trim lines. Even if it doesn’t end up getting cut off, this keeps it from looking uncomfortably close to the edge.
Understanding these details is the key to creating a document that matches your project’s vision. If you’re itching to turn your creative ideas into reality, why not reach out to us for a personalized consultation? We’re here to help make your print project a breeze!
