Margin Guides For The Final Trim
Wasn't that a tasty tip in part two? It may have been a little gory (after all we were talking about bleed!) but it was definitely a necessary topic. This topic won't be quite as gory, though we are still talking about guillotine blades. However, there will be no blood this time, as I said in the prior article the mistake that is made third most commonly is quite similar to the second, that is Critical Content is too close to final trim!
In the last article written, bleed was explained as being any object that you would use as a background and that it should extend to the very edge of the paper.
Critical content can be defined as the complete opposite. It is considered anything that isn't in the background. Examples of this would be body text, headlines, logo's, pictures and captions. Anything at all that is not part of the background.
If you recall, we discussed how the book cutter never cuts two sheets in the exact same position every time. Each sheet of paper reacts differently to the pressure it experiences during cutting and slight variations in the cut result. Well, guillotines work the same way. Bleed compensates for a slightly larger sheet length.
If the blade ends up cutting closer then formal for the final trim, your "critical content" of text, logos, and other items could end up being cut.
Even if it's not trimmed off but it still really close (1-2mm) the 'asthetics' of the finished product will look like it has been cut too close.
The Solution? Critical content needs to be in at least 5mm from the products final trim. You need to use 'margins' to guide you when your placing your graphics and text. This is for magazines, brochures, business cards, stationary and any other printed product.
If you're making a thicker book, you'll want to increase the distance by the spine to about 15 - 20 mm. You should insure that you have the "facing pages" set correctly so that even numbered pages are on the left (with the spine on the right) and odd numbered pages are on the right (with the spine on the left).
The top, bottom, and right (opposite the spine) should have a white space of no less than 5-10mm between the text and the edge of the paper in order to have a consistent look.
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Published April 29th, 2008
Filed in Advertising
