Bleed is the industry term used to describe what happens when the document gets trimmed down.
When you send you document to the printer they will impose it up onto a much larger sheet so you image could be placed, say, four time across and 10 times deep, that way they don't need to print it one at a time.
Because they do this, they need to trim the paper sheets down to your document size.
If you don't have bleed on your document, and the printer doesn't get the trim spot on you will get something like this.
See the white edge down the side?
So you need to put
Bleed on your document by extending the artwork beyond the document size by at least 3mm. Like this.
That way when they trim it down, you can be sure they will trim through the artwork which you have extended past the document size, thus making sure your final trimmed down product will not have any white edges.
So, it should look like this.
Marcus
![[bigsmile]](/data/assets/smilies/bigsmile.gif "[bigsmile] [bigsmile]")
