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A fellow designer and I just finished designing a magazine for the September/October 2011 issue, and I have to say, I learned a lot after having the opportunity to be a part of the final product. Before this issue, I had just designed spreads and ads and handed it over to get prepared for print, however, one of the big things I learned this time around has to do with the aspects of a bleed. There are some really nice things you can do with bleeds but you have to know when to create them.

If you were never taught what the term “bleed” means when discussing design and print, now is the time to learn. Bleeds are when something like a shape or photo goes off of the page or beyond the boundaries of your document. Personally, I use bleeds very often on my projects. For a magazine in particular, I think photos tend to look really nice when they are allowed to run off of the page and are not confined within a box or a circle. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t use bleeds for everything, and I don’t think they are always the right way to go, but I do think they often add a certain element to a piece that may seem empty without it. For example, on a busi- ness card, a nice and simple color bar across the bottom and sometimes even the top as well can add that extra something you were looking for to make the project feel complete.

There is something you need to know before you begin adding color bars and photos that run off of a page, leading you to the next, or off of one side of a card and onto the other. You should always plan your bleeds at the beginning and during your design process, not when you are all finished. Many times I have completed a design and then realized I need to run the design ele- ment off of the page, but I already have everything arranged and cropped exactly how I want it. This is especially problematic when I need to bleed a photo off of the page but I already have it to the size and crop that I want, so going back and making it bleed may change something I don’t necessarily want changed. Now, typically what I do is go into my document settings and make a .125 inch bleed on all sides. This will create a thin border that is .125 inches away from the edge of your document so you know just how far to stretch that color bar or photo (in the photo below, the red line around the document is the bleed line). And why do we have to do this? When a project gets sent to the printer and there needs to be multiple copies printed, the printer uses machines to print and cut your business cards, magazines, brochures, etc. When they use these machines, sometimes the stack of paper will be moved ever so slightly from where it was originally placed, but that slight movement can be enough to ruin the cut. A picture that was once lined up right on the edge is now cut too far in or too far off from where it is supposed to be. Bleeds allow plenty of room for any paper movements during the cutting process.

So the next time you go to design a project and you decide you’d like to bleed elements off of the page, make sure to set your bleeds up before you are finished with your project so you don’t have to go back and change something you are already happy with. Please let us know if you have any tips on document bleeds.

Written By: Jen Ebenrick