Bleed, trim and safe zone are terms within the printing industry that relate to the tolerance levels that have to be allowed for. Even the most sophisticated equipment, like ours, has a variance when printed media is cut to size and shape.
The trim is where the guillotine is set to cut the paper, vinyl or other material, the bleed and safe zones are to allow for any variation. The bleed is the outer limit and whatever background colour you use should go past this to avoid any white or other unprinted colour to show. The Safe zone is the inner limit where all important stuff like text, borders or images should keep within so they don’t get trimmed off or look uneven.
The usual tolerance levels are 5mm but our standards are higher and you only need 2mm for the safe zone and 3mm for the bleed with Handy Labels.
The trim is where we remove the ‘bleed’ and cut your artwork to its final size.
