Getting rid of that ugly white border — A "Bleed" is a term used in printing for images or graphics that extend beyond the edge of the paper that gets trimmed off. So essentially the design "bleeds" off the page an 1/8 of an inch on each side.
Printing presses, like conventional laser and ink jet style printers, cannot print all the way to the edge of a sheet of paper. Many printed works, however, appear to be printed all the way to the edge of the paper. This is accomplished by printing the material on a larger sheet of paper beyond the desired final size of the printout. After this, all excess printed material is cut off. When the final work is viewed by anyone, the “finished work” gives the illusion that the printing press had actually printed your design all the way to the edge of the paper. This small excess amount of artwork on each edge of the paper is called “bleed.”
Printers cannot print right to the edge of a paper sheet. To create that effect, the printer must use a sheet which is larger than the document size. Then the printer prints beyond the edge of the document size (by 1/8"), then cuts the paper down to the document size.
It is the designer's responsibility to set the bleed correctly. For example, when setting up a 3.5 x 2 (business card) job, you should START your job at 3.75 x 2.25.
By extending the image past the cut mark, the cutter blade cuts through ink, rather than trying to cut exactly on a line.
Shown below is a diagram of a properly set up design file. The blue lines signify where we will cut the job. The red-tinted area beyond the blue lines signify "bleed area." As a rule of thumb, try to keep important information at least 1/8" from the cut lines, as this ensures nothing important will be cut.
