Bleed

Bleed: Extra artwork extended 1/8" past the trim line so background color reaches the edge after cutting.

Bleed is the buffer of artwork you extend past the final cut line of a card or tuck box. Industrial press cutters tolerate roughly 1/32" of drift on a high-speed run — even with perfect calibration, the stack of sheets moves a hair as the blade comes down. Without bleed, that drift shows up as thin white slivers along the trim edges of your printed cards, and there's no fixing it after the fact. The industry standard for playing cards is 1/8" (0.125") of bleed on all four sides; tuck boxes use the same amount past every panel edge of the dieline. The opposite of bleed is the safe zone — the inner margin where critical artwork must sit. Together they define a 'risk corridor' between trim and safe zone where you can place background, photography, and ambient pattern, but nothing you can't afford to lose a sliver of. Every free Mr. Playing Card template ships with the bleed line, trim line, and safe zone pre-marked on separate layers so you can design straight into the file without measuring anything yourself. If you submit artwork without bleed, our prepress team will either expand the background for you (if it's a solid color or simple pattern) or flag the file and ask for a corrected version before going to plate.