What is bleed?
If any element on your document layout makes contact with the document border you will have to use bleed. The trick is to place the element so that it goes over the border where the document will be cropped after printing. The term bleed is used for all objects overlapping the border of your document.
Bleed refers to extending the image (such as the background or a photo) beyond the trim line. After the traycards and inserts are printed, the plant trims them in stacks of hundreds of sheets at a time, which is much faster than trimming individual pieces. Bleed gives the plant a margin of error during the trimming process, so that if the stack of paper shifts a bit during the cut, the white of the paper won’t show along the edge and you won’t have a little white stripe going down the side of your inserts/traycards. We recommend that you add 1/8-inch of bleed to each side of your layouts. For example, your insert will be trimmed to 4.75″ x 4.75″, which means if you were to add 1/8-inch to all four sides (top, bottom, left, right) for bleed, the dimensions before you start your design should be 5″ x 5″.
Bleed is needed to ensure your finished product looks its best. Images, background colours and other fills, which are intended to print to the trimmed edge of the page, should be extended 3mm beyond the edge to give a 'bleed' and allow for any movement during the cutting process. Any background image which meets the edge of your design needs to actually be printed slightly larger than the trimmed size to ensure that when your job is trimmed the background image does meet to the edge of your design without any white slithers of unprinted paper showing.
