Bleed

What is 'creep'?

If you’re printing Saddle stitched brochures and are using a paper weight over 120gsm or have anything over 12 pages, you’ll need to allow for creep in your document. Creep is the technical name for what happens when you fold a stack of pages together; the outer pages appear shorter as they wrap around the large inner bulk. Because of this, the inner pages stick out slightly and so are trimmed by us to give a nice, straight document edge. Anything that is printed over this trim line, like text or page numbers, will be cut away. To combat creep, we always recommend that you avoid using images or text which go over a two page spread. The best way to avoid wonky page numbers, images or text is to make sure that everything is 5 - 6mm away from the edges of your page.

How do I apply bleed?

Here are Wee Print Ltd we require a 3mm bleed. Depending on what program you are using, you may be able to apply bleed when you are saving artwork as a PDF. In programs that do not have that option (eg. Word, Powerpoint and Photoshop) you will need to set up the page size as slightly larger to allow for the bleed.

What is bleed?

Bleeds are a little tough to get your head around initially so we have tried to explain them in as simple a terms as possible. The bleed is the area of the artwork that will be trimmed off. If you do not provide bleed your print will have white edges on it as the guillotine blade bends 1-1.5mm through the paper stack when trimming. By using our templates you will ensure text/images are not trimmed off. We require a 3mm bleed around all your artwork. For more information go to our supplying artwork section.