Design Jargon of the Day: Bleed

When making a printed design where colour (anything but C0 M0 Y0 K0) goes right to the edges of your canvas, you generally need to add bleed. Bleed is an extra border around the perimeter of the canvas/artboard/page, which is added to ensure that when your design is printed, any small shift by the printer or paper will not result in blank areas on the final output. The background which you want to go right to the edge must thus extend beyond the canvas size in every direction to fill the bleed area.

Bleed cannot be added automatically with Photoshop, but is a cinch in Illustrator and InDesign where the File > New… dialog box contains options for adding bleed, which becomes clearly distinguishable as a red border that sits beyond the artboard/page when you start working on your design.

Any further questions or comments on bleed? Let me know in the comments below!

Love Luke