What is a printing bleed?

Bleed is term often used in printing and the customer often obtains an additional charge for a bleed. The reason for that is not get more money out of the customer, rather to cover the cost for the difficulty of running a job that contains a bleed.

First off, let me answer the question of what a bleed is: A bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet of paper. In other words, the color runs off the end of the page and there is not a border.

Why is there an additional charge for a bleed? Running a job that contains a bleed adds a degree of difficulty to the job. It requires more steps, such as cutting and also requires the job to be ran on a larger sheet of paper. For example, if there a job that requires an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper, with a full bleed, that job must be ran on an 11 x 17 sheet of paper and cut down so that the bleed exists. The charge is a result of having to use an 11 x 17 sheet of paper and the cost to cut that sheet of paper to correct size that the customer wants.

There a variations of bleeds:

Full bleed, (bleeds on all 4 sides)
3/4 bleeds, (bleeds on 3 sided)
1/2 bleeds, (bleeds on 2 sides)
1/4 bleed, (bleed on 1 side)

Regardless of the bleed variation, the larger sheet of paper is needed to run the job and it will need to be cut down.

If you have any questions about a bleed, or want to know if a job that you would like ran contains a bleed, please feel free to contact Savon Q Print at qprint@savondentalplan.com.