What is bleed?
Bleed is applied to any area of colour or photo which touches the edge of a page. Adding a bleed to your pages refers to extending the colour or image over the edge of the page, as show below.
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| In the above picture, the edge of the page is represented by the dotted line. The areas of colour and photos have been enlarged so that they extend over the edge of the page. This overhang is known as the bleed. |
Why do newsletters need bleed?
Newsletters need bleed because of the way in which they are printed by the professional printer.
Professional printers do not work in the same way as your laser or inkjet printer. Laser and inkjet printers print on paper which has already been cut to a size - such as A4 or A3. Professional printers print your newsletter on a huge roll of paper, and then cut it up to form each newsletter (a process known as trimming). This is illustrated below.
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| A roll of paper with 4 copies of the newsletter printed on it. The black lines indicate where the roll will be cut. |
The cuts made when trimming the newsletters to size do not always occur at the exact edge of the newsletter. It's not uncommon for these cuts to be up to 3mm out from where they should occur.
With and without bleed
If the trimming is slightly off and you have no bleed, your newsletter will have annoying white gaps at its edges, as shown below.
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| A newsletter without bleed. In the above example, the cuts are slightly off and will be made along the black lines. |
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| The end result. You can see the white gaps along the top and left edges. |
However, if you add bleed to your newsletter, and the trimming is slightly off, your colours and photos will still go to the edge of the page, as shown below.
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| A newsletter with bleed. In the above example, the cuts are slightly off and will be made along the black lines. |
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| The end result. Because we used a bleed, there are no white gaps along the top and left edges. |
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