Print, Bleed & Crop

One of the common struggles working in Beijing has been explaining simple printing marks to those who don’t understand and sometimes more exasperating, to printers who don’t understand. Language barrier plays a role so in this post we’ll give you the English and Chinese translation for print marks. Next time you’re explaining how your design needs to be printed, give them this quick lesson!

Color

RGB

RGB is generally used for digital designs. R for Red, G for Green and B for Blue.

CMYK

When you set up a document for printing, the standard color mode is CMYK. C stands for Cyan, M for Magenta, Y for Yellow and K for blacK.

While you can change the colour mode later on, it’s preferred to begin knowing if your design will be viewed digitally or printed so you will have a better idea how the final colours will appear.

Print Marks

Trim Line | 成品

This is the printed and cut piece of your design.

Live Area or Safe Zone | 版芯

Live Area refers to where it’s safe to place important copy and images. While each printer is different in their requirements, rule of thumb is 3.175 mm.

Bleed Area | 出血

Typically the more bleed you can offer, the better. The minimum bleed by most printers is 6.35 mm but some specs may require more than that. Full bleed means a printed piece where the artwork extends over the edges of the paper and there’s no white space.

Crop Marks | 裁切线

Indicates to the printer where to cut the paper.

2 Shades of Black

Black — 100 K | 黑

Generally used for body copy and barcodes.

Rich Black — 40 C 40 M 40 Y 100 K | 正黑

Should be used when using blocks of black, for example if the background of your design is mostly black. Choosing Rich Black over Black will allow your colors to appear more vibrant.

Spot Color

If you want to print using brighter colours or exact colour matching for consistent company branding that what CMYK inks produce, use spot color/PMS (Pantone Matching System) colours.

Paper Sizes

The ISO paper size A standard is based on each size being half of the size of the previous one, when folded parallel to the shorter lengths. This allows for a variety of usees like enlarging or reducing images without cutoffs or margins, or you can fold to make a booklet of the next size down.

The sizes have an aspect ratio (or ratio of the length to the width) of the square root of 2.

(Paper sizes not applicable in the U.S. or Canada)