So you created some artwork and took it to the printers, only for them to send it back and ask for 3mm bleeds.

Sound familiar? Well in this short blog post, I will explain what the heck that all means.

What’s a bleed?

To put it simply, a bleed is a border. However, not your average border to frame some work. Nah, this border is an extension to the lesser important artwork.

What I mean by lesser important artwork is the solid colours, gradients, textures and parts of images with no real relevance. Parts of images with products or people’s faces must stay out of the bleed. In addition text must also stay out of the bleed and for a nicer finish, it must keep well away from it.

How much bleed do I need?

Most printers will ask for a 3mm bleed. This means an extra 3mm on every side. This isn’t needed for folds. To put it simply, you need to add 6mm to your overall (unfolded) width and height (3+3 = 6).

For example, if you have a 6 page DL leaflet, it’ll unfold as one sheet of A4, measured at 297mm x 210mm, so the overall size with bleed would be 303mm x 216m ,l;.mm.

If you’re using modern day design software, a lot of it includes options for bleeds, so no need for any maths.

Why have a bleed?

So, when design work is printed, it’s printed onto large sheets of paper, and usually multiple artworks on one sheet, like 2up, 4up, etc. to save on waste.

This artwork needs trimming down by a large industrial guillotine and is usually trimmed down in bulk.

As skilled as the printing finishers are, it’s still quite impossible to cut 200 odd leaflets accurately on one cut line in one go. If they tried to do this without a bleed, they’d more than likely miss the trim line slightly on some of the material. This would leave a very thin but very noticeable white line, which would be more obvious on darker print work.

So this is why printers will ask for a bleed. A bit of unimportant extra print that is designed to be trimmed off and make sure that no thin white lines are visible on your final print work.