Bleed is the part of your design that extends past the trim line so that, when the printer cuts the stack of sheets, no white slivers appear at the edge. A dieline is the set of guides — bleed, trim and safe area — that keeps your artwork inside the lines.
How to set up bleed for print
Most commercial printers ask for 3 mm of bleed (about 0.125 inch in the US). Extend any background colour, image or texture that touches the edge all the way out to the bleed line. Keep important content — text, logos, faces — inside the safe area, at least 3 mm in from the trim, so nothing gets shaved off by normal cutting tolerance.
What each mark does
- Crop marks sit just outside each corner and tell the cutter exactly where the trim line is.
- Registration marks are the crosshair targets used to line up each ink plate (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) so colours stay aligned.
- The colour bar lets the press operator check ink density and consistency across the sheet.
Common bleed sizes
- Business cards, flyers, postcards: 3 mm / 0.125 in bleed, 3 mm safe area.
- Folded or saddle-stitched work: 3 mm bleed is standard; check with your printer for spine allowances.
- Large format and posters: bleed often increases to 5 mm or more.
Exporting the right file
Use the PDF export for a file you can send straight to a print shop — it carries crop and registration marks at the correct physical size. Use the SVG export when you want to place the dieline as a template layer inside Illustrator, Affinity or Inkscape; it opens at true dimensions so you can build your artwork on top of it.