Posted by admin | Posted in Print Design | Posted on 20-08-2008
In an interesting article today in Before and After magazine. The discussion was of the price contraints and budget limitations of adding a bleed to your piece.
Just to make sure everyone is up to speed, adding a "bleed" to a page means the ink will run off the edge of the page. This normally means you include anywhere from an 1/8" to 1/4" larger than the actual page. Now, unfortunately this means for most printers that your work will be trimmed down to the crop marks.
Now, let’s suppose you are on a tight budget. How can you achieve a "bleed" feel without a bleed budget?
Before and After had a great alternative. Pull your background in to create a nice white margin. Once this is done, you can arrange one of your elements to expand beyond the image, this not only creates a classic feel to your piece, but also gives you a nice "popping" element.
Try this out on your next budget piece! I think you’ll be pleased with the results.
Being a printer… the bleed when it first started out was not so bad. It made everything look nice. Now, every job that we print, has a bleed. Today we printed 400 fold over cards, that bleed all the way across the top of the piece. Folding on a bleed, on card stock unless you actually take the time to get the paper scored, looks terrible. The toner flakes off, or the paper cracks.
Most times we deal with none professional graphic designers that don’t realize that in order to do a bleed, we actually need, like you said, 1/8” to 1/4” of a margin, so they’ll set their type right to the edge, and still expect their piece to be a bleed.
In reference to the sample piece… I like the one with no bleed! Great illustration!
P.S. I had more to say on this subject, but my comment was longer than your post.:-) And I realized that 85% of it was venting about the bleed. lol