Bleed is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet before trimming. It is very difficult to print an image exactly to the edge of a sheet. So, to achieve this, printers use bleeds. Bleeds give a printer a small amount of space to account for movement of the paper and small variations in paper size in order to assure that no unprinted edges occur in the final trimmed document.
The How to in InDesign:
1. Go to File-Document Setup
2. Make sure More Options in the right hand side of the dialogue box is clicked.
3. Where it says bleed at the bottom of the box, make sure all fields read 0.125.
4. Extend anything you want to print to the edge of the sheet to the red line this procedure gives you.
5. Make sure the use document bleed settings and crop marks are clicked when you export your PDF.
The How to in Microsoft Programs:
We don’t recommend using Microsoft programs to design high quality work due to bleeds and a number of other technical factors. We do offer professional graphic design services to try to make high-quality files easier for you to create.
But, that said, if you’re dead set on it, we generally recommend making sure text and logos you don’t want getting cut off have plenty of margin from the edge of the sheet and then making a PDF of the file. If you send a Microsoft file, we will be emailing back a PDF to make sure nothing has changed between your computer and ours. We will then blow the file up a few percentage points to give us some bleed to work with. If text and logos are too close to the edge, it may result in these being trimmed off.