If your document has the correct 3mm bleed then it will show as it is seen past the crop marks. With a minimum of 3mm bleed allows us to ‘trim to colour which avoids any white ’slithers’ which may appear when the items are guillotined after printing. See here how the document looks with ‘crop marks’ but without any bleed.

Then see here (indicated in green) where the background colour or image must exceed the bleed edge in order to allow for it to be trimmed off. Also notice that the crop marks are offset, i.e. they don’t join, they need to be like this so they don’t print. If they joined together then its likely that they would been seen on the final printed article as they would print inside the bleed area. Please allow at least 3mm offset for the crop marks.

When you need to supply your artwork in pagination or printers pairs. The most simple way to work these out is to make a mock up of your intended booklet using blank paper and simply write the numbers on the pages. Start with Page 1 being the front cover and then continue numbering until the last page or back cover is the last number. Nearly all booklets are constructed out of 4 pages, or multiples of 4 pages.
For example, a four page booklet is one piece of paper folded in half, the outside pages when viewed as a flat sheet would have Page one is the front cover, Page 2 is the inside left hand page, Page 3 is the inside right hand page, and Page 4 is the back cover or last page.
Please refer to the example below.

You’ll see I have worked out an 8 page and a 12 page booklet for you, you can work out bigger booklets Eg: 16 page, 20 page etc by simply doing as I suggest and make one up with blank paper and write the page numbers on, lay the sheets flat to see your printers pairs.

Solid areas of colour in particular solid black, can pose a problem if its not been set up correctly.

Most artwork we see is set up with full colour black, which means that the black is made up from within the full colour set, there will be a percentage of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.

This is fine if the whole colour make up is less than 200%, Eg 50% or less of all C,M,Y,K colours.

If 200% colour density is exceeded, then the paper its being printed onto will become saturated that its unlikely that the ink will dry properly. Should this be the case then this will cause ’set-off’, which is where the ink transfers from one print to another, which is a huge problem.

With regards to solid black areas, the crucial colour is obviously black, more often than not solid black areas have the black set to less 100%,  which means it will never achieve full 100% black.

If a black solid area only consists of black ink only then the result can be quite dull and becomes a matt black, even on gloss paper.

So other colours can be added into the mixture can help to ‘deepen’ the black, this is whats known in the trade as ‘Rich Black’ and needs to be made up of the following.

For a deep black, 100% Black (K), 50% Cyan (C), there is some room for a small percentage of magenta here too but never any yellow!. Yellow can make the black appear grey as it lightens it. On screen this will look fine, but if any percentage of yellow is added then this will water down the black, similar to adding white to it, so try to avoid yellow being present if at all possible

Well this is a strange one, the name indicates a leaflet which folds ‘tri’ or 3 times doesn’t it?, well no not exactly. This term is usually used to describe an A4 leaflet which folds twice to 1/3 A4. It can also be called an 6pp DL, this means a leaflet with 6 panels, for example if you fold down an a4 leaflet to a 3rd of an A4, then you will have six panels in order to add your design. This kind of works a min brochure, a very cost effective way of having a multi-page mini booklet printed out of one sheet.

There are two ways of folding a tri-fold leaflet,  either a ‘Z’ fold or a ‘Roll Fold. The ‘Z Fold’ is when the document folds back on its self like a concertina effect, and the ‘Roll Fold’ is when the panels are folded over each other, and then folded inwards.

The most common paper type for this kind of leaflet is around the 150gsm or 160gsm, as this thickness doesn’t need to be scored before folding. Scoring is done as a precaution like a pre-fold  which stops thicker material form cracking when it goes through the folding machine.

For a roll folded leaflets the In order to create artwork for a A4 folded to DL, or 6pp DL leaflets you need to divide up the 6 panels, creating 3 vertical panels each side. Imagine the document is flat A4 landscape, and you are looking at the outer cover side, so what you see is document which is 297mm wide x 210mm high (without bleed). Measured from the left to right, the left hand panel is 97mm wide, the centre panel (back cover) is 100mm wide and the right hand panel (front cover) is also 100mm wide.

The opposite is then the case on the other inside spread. Again reading from left to right. The Leaflet hand panel (inside front cover) is 100mm wide, the centre panel (inside of back cover) is also 100mm, then the right hand panel is 97mm. By having the flap panel slightly shorter on its width allows it to slide within the fold neatly without obstruction. The term ‘roll folded leaflets‘ is trying to describe the way in its its folded, the ‘flap panel’ is rolled over the next panel and then the next panel before its flat folded.

Don’t forget to add ‘bleed‘ to these measurements.

When artwork is created and made ‘print ready’, in almost all cases bleed is required. This is an additional area added (normally 3mm on all edges) to the finished size of your document. It allows either the finishers or even the guy who guillotines the final job down to size when its completed, a little room for maneuver.

If you have ever seen a finished printed item with a very fine white line on one of the edges, this usually means that bleed was not allowed for and when the final job was cut, it left a white strip along the edge. This doesn’t mean that the guillotine is not accurate, but when several hundred items are being cut at any one time – the guillotine only has to be out by a fraction of a millimetre and the white edge will appear.

So it’s best to add a 3mm edge to your artwork on all edges. Every image or background colour which reaches the final cut size of your document, needs to bleed over the edge, so that when its cut no white areas are showing.

If you are experiencing problems with bleed edge with your artwork, give our studio a call and we can give you advice or maybe even add bleed for you.

For other information and paper sizes see our Artwork Specifications page on the website.

Here at Print-Print we spend a lot of time giving advise to customers who are new to the world of full colour printng, advising them on how to prepare their design work for print.