Finished Size, Bleeds, Trees and Your Printing Budget

Finished Size, Bleeds, Trees and Your Printing Budget

At EcoGraphics, we can print just about any design imaginable. So why should you worry about the finished size of a piece and whether or not it requires one or more bleeds (printed image which runs off the sheet)? The answer is simple: you don’t need to give these things a second thought.....that is, if the cost of printing is not a great concern and/or the additional impact that a design can provide through the use of bleeds or an unusual finished size, will offset the less efficient use of paper that it may require. If, however, you would like to keep your printing costs down, while at the same time minimizing the amount of paper (trees) required to produce your final product, there are a few simple concepts that you should keep in mind.

Finished Size

Different papers for sheet-fed offset printing presses come in several standard parent sheet sizes. Some papers also come ream-wrapped in 8½ x 11 size, and sometimes in 11 x 17 and 8½ x 14 sizes. If the paper required by your project is available in an appropriate cut-sheet size, and the quantity that you are printing is less than about 5,000, it usually costs less to print on the cut-sheet size. If the paper you like isn’t available in the size you need, it can be cut from parent or printed two-, three- or four-up (or more) and cut to finished size. This is usually a good approach for smaller-sized items like postcards, or longer press runs of larger-sized items.

How then does one determine if a particular design will result in the efficient use of paper? It depends on your design’s finished size and the parent size(s) available for the desired paper. If, for example, the paper is only available in a 23 x 35 parent, (a very common size), a design with a finished size of 8½ x 11 will result in 8 finished sheets from each parent with about 7% trim waste. The same design with a finished size of 9 x 12 on the other hand, will result in only 5 finished sheets from each parent with about 33% trim waste. In other words, a full one-third of the paper would be wasted. These efficiency factors can be easily calculated for any printing project, and should be taken into consideration before a design goes beyond the conceptual stage.

Bleeds

Bleeds are very popular with graphic artists because of the increased impact that they can give to a design. Since it is not practical to print an image across the edge of a sheet of paper, designs with bleeds are printed on oversized sheets and subsequently trimmed to finish size, giving the appearance of a printed image extending to the paper’s edge. Because of the way in which they are printed, bleeds on business cards result in little or no increase in trim waste. Letterhead, brochures and flyers with bleeds, which are printed on 8½ x 11 cut-sheet paper and subsequently trimmed to a finished size of 7½ x 10 or less result in moderately increased trim waste. These same items designed to bleed with a finished size of 8½x11 can substantially increase the percentage of each paper parent sheet which is charged to the customer, but tossed in the recycle bin. Of course there are also additional charges for the trimming.

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Last modified: March 06, 2003