How to Prepare Your Document Layout for Printing

When preparing a document to send to a printer, there are several specifications and elements to include in your layout. These specs help to ensure that the printer provides your final project as intended.

Trim marks, or crop marks, show the printer where to cut the paper. For a standard layout, such as a business card or poster, trim marks are small lines located in each corner of the document. One line shows the horizontal cut, and one shows the vertical cut. Since you don’t want these lines to show up on the printed piece, trim marks are placed outside of the final visible, or live, area.

When working in graphics software such as Illustrator, set the trim marks to be shown on screen and automatically placed in the final document export, such as a PDF.

The trimmed page size is the final intended size of your pages, after being cut along the trim marks. This size is important to supply to the printer because it determines what machines will be used to print your job, which affects the final cost. When starting a project, the size you create your document at in a graphics program is the trimmed page size.

It's often necessary to have images and other design elements extend to the edge of the printed page. If in your layout these elements only extend to the edge, and not beyond, a small amount of white space may show up on the edge of the paper if it's not cut exactly on the trim marks. For this reason, there are bleeds. Bleeds are images that extend beyond the live area of the page (and beyond the trim marks) to guarantee clean edges.

The amount that images need to extend beyond the trim marks is referred to as the bleed. Consult your printer at the start of a job to find out the required amount of bleed, which is often around one-eighth of an inch. In your graphics software, use guides to mark the bleed area, which doesn't need to show up in the final document that you deliver. Make sure any image that needs to extend to the edge of the page extends to the bleed guides.

Just as images that should bleed should extend beyond the live area of your layout, images that you don’t want to risk getting clipped should stay within a margin, sometimes referred to as a safety. Consult your printer for these measurements.