Printer’s Bleed

If you are new to printing or not a designer you may be confused with the term bleed. This is one of the most important factors when you require flyer printing, leaflet printing or any other print product.

Commercial printer prints are not the same as home printers. Whereas if you print from home you will usually print one flyer per sheet of paper, commercial printers do things differently. If you require 1,000 A6 flyers, they don’t get printed on 1,000 sheets of paper. They are printed on huge roles of paper and then trimmed down to A6 size.

What is a bleed?

We are unable to print to the edge of an A6 flyer so have to print onto an area a little bit bigger and then trim the flyer down to its required size.

Any images or background colours which you require to be printed to the edge of the flyer must be extended 3mm beyond the trim lines to give a bleed. This 1mm is required for flyer printing, business cards and other products. Poster printing must be extended 3mm.

The trimmed size of an A6 flyer is 148mm x 105mm so with a 3mm bleed around all four edges means that the artwork size should be 154mm x 111mm.

If I don’t add a bleed what will happen?

When your artwork is trimmed there is a small amount of movement. This can be around 3mm and can cause problems with the way your print will look. If you send us your artwork at 148mm x 105mm and there is 3mm of movement to the right of the flyer when trimming it will mean that on the right hand size of your flyer will be a white border. Although this might seem minimalistic, however it won’t look good on your finished print.

Close content

When you are adding your content to your artwork ensure it is not too close to the trim line as it may be cut off. We recommend that content such as photographs, logos and text are placed at least 5mm from the trim line.

For brochure printing we recommend that content is not placed closer than 7mm to the trim line.

If you require further information about bleed please email us at info@printmeit.com or telephone 0800 043 7250.