Bleeds for Business Cards
The Crop Marks in your file represent where your job will trim. Bleeds are critical in printing because high volume cutters are imprecise. Cutting blades need to be thick to penetrate large quantities of paper, so a trim tolerance of 1/32″ to 1/16″ is considered normal and acceptable.
If your file has color to the edge, you must have a 1/8″ bleed extending beyond the crop marks to accommodate this trim tolerance. Otherwise, a white edge can appear on the final job.
- Crops & Bleeds for print
Borders are not recommended, but if you have a border around the edges, it should be at least 1/4″ wide; a thinner border can appear asymmetrical after cropping, also because of trim tolerance.
The “Safe Zone” is the inside area where type should not appear, just in case cutting is off a bit.
