Design Context: Design for Print - Page Layout Design Research

About printer’s marks

Bleed

If any element of your document layout runs up to the page edge you will have to use bleed. This means that you add an extra image or colour block so that it goes over the border where the document will be cropped after printing. The term bleed is used for all objects overlapping the border of your document.

After a page/sheet is printed it will be cropped to its correct final size. The bleed in your document gives the cropping some room for error. The paper itself can expand or contract, the cropping machine could be set up wrong or the person working on the brochure could make a mistake. There are lots of things that could go wrong with the cropping, and if you weren’t using bleed the images wouldn’t be neatly aligned with the side of your printed document. It is standard to have 3mm of bleed to allow for these slight movements when trimming the page/sheet.

When you prepare artwork for printing, a number of marks are needed for the printer device to register the artwork elements precisely and verify correct color. You can add the following kinds of printer’s marks to your artwork:

Trim Marks

Fine (hairline) horizontal and vertical rules that define wh; ere the page should be trimmed. Trim marks can also help register (align) one color separation to another.
Registration Marks

Small targets outside the page area for aligning the different separations in a color document.
Color Bars

Small squares of color representing the CMYK inks and tints of gray (in 10% increments). Your service provider uses these marks to adjust ink density on the printing press.
Page Information

Labels the film with the name of the artboard number, the time and date of printout, the line screen used, the screen angle for the separation, and the color of each particular plate. These labels appear at the tops of the images.

Printer’s marks

A.

Star target (not optional)

B.

Registration mark

C.

Page information

D.

Trim marks

E.

Color bar

F.

Tint bar

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Add printer’s marks

Choose File > Print.
Select Marks & Bleed on the left side of the Print dialog box.
Select the kinds of printer’s marks you want to add. You can also choose between Roman and Japanese-style marks.
(Optional) If you select Trim Marks, specify the width of trim-mark lines and the offset distance between the trim marks and the artwork.

To avoid drawing printer’s marks on a bleed, be sure to enter an Offset value greater than the Bleed value.

About bleeds

Bleed is the amount of artwork that falls outside of the printing bounding box, or outside the crop area and trim marks. You can include bleed in your artwork as a margin of error—to ensure that the ink is still printed to the edge of the page after the page is trimmed or that an image can be stripped into a keyline in a document. Once you create the artwork that extends into the bleed, you can use Illustrator to specify the extent of the bleed. Increasing the bleed makes Illustrator print more of the artwork that is located beyond the trim marks. The trim marks still define the same size printing bounding box, however.

The size of the bleed you use depends on its purpose. A press bleed (that is, an image that bleeds off the edge of the printed sheet) should be at least 18 points. If the bleed is to ensure that an image fits a keyline, it needs to be no more than 2 or 3 points. Your print shop can advise you on the size of the bleed necessary for your particular job.

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Add a bleed

Choose File > Print.
Select Marks & Bleed on the left side of the Print dialog box.
Do one of the following:
- Enter values for Top, Left, Bottom, and Right to specify the placement of the bleed marks. Click the link icon to make all the values the same.
- Select Use Document Bleed to use the bleed settings defined in the New Document dialog box.
The maximum bleed you can set is 72 points; the minimum bleed is 0 points.

Margins
A margin is the white space that surrounds the content of a page. It can be set to the type/live area or smaller.
Gutter
i) The line down the middle where two pages come together is called the gutter.
ii) The area that separates columns; this is also called the ‘alley’.

Registration MarksThe little circle with a cross through it is printed using every colour of the four-colour printing process. If they’re being printed accurately, they should overlap precisely so the mark looks entirely black. Therefore if any of the colours are slightly offset (out of register) then they’ll be displayed, showing the job isn’t being printed correctly.

Trim Marks
These are small lines which show exactly where the finished page will be cut during the finishing process. They should display at the edge of each margin.

Colour Bars
Colour bars are printed outside the trim area and are used for quality control purposes by the printer. Squares of colour are printed on the area of the page to be trimmed off, which the printing press operator uses to check colour density and consistency is maintained. This checking process is automated by some printers, with digital scanners tracking the colour bars to ensure quality and consistency is maintained. See also our 5 step guide to Pantone Colours.

Types of lithography registration

There are many different styles of registration for many different types of printing. These deal with stone lithography, as used in fine arts printmaking.

T-bar

This method, using small measured registration marks on both the stone and the paper, is very accurate and simple to do. The printer measures the exact size of the paper and the desired margins. Then marks are made at both ends of the sheet of paper, and corresponding marks (usually in the shape of a "T") are made on the stone. Then the printer matches the marks on the paper to those on the stone. This way many runs of different colors can be pulled exactly in line with one another, each of them measured from the same system of marks.
Pin-hole

This method involves laying the paper on the un-inked surface, and making a pin-hole through both the bottom and top of the paper, being careful to make a mark in the stone's surface. Then the locations of the holes are transferred to each sheet of paper to be printed. When printing, one should place pins in each hole of a sheet of paper, and lower it onto the inked stone, placing each pin in its respective hole in the stone. This method can ruin paper by creating holes. And if the holes get too large, they lose their function as registration devices.
Eye-balling

This method relies solely on hand-eye coordination. The printer places the paper over the stone-image, measuring and judging registration by eye. This is not very consistent, depending on the person.