Are you missing that specially designed top right corner of your image? Is your credit information chopped in half? Has your ornately designed border vanished from the perimeter of your design?
Blame it on the bleed.
The bleed is a 1/8″ (.125″) area that gets cropped off of your image on the side(s) that touch the external edge of a pingg Stencil.
So for example, let’s say that you select this pingg Stencil to create your kick-ass invite / ecard:
pingg Square Label Overlay
As you can see, your artwork will fill the entire background, which means on all 4 sides of your image the bleed will be in effect.
But don’t worry, there is an easy solution to all your cropping worries. All you have to do is remember to place a guideline along the edge of your Photoshop or Illustrator document at the 1/8″ (.125″) mark so you don’t place your important elements in that area. I might also suggest not placing something such as your credit information extremely close to or sitting on the bleed line. After all, you wouldn’t want the descender of the G in your name getting cut off. Now, would you?
Bleed Guidelines
If you aren’t sure how to set up guidelines yourself, pingg offers Square and Horizontal Templates that you can download that have bleed guidelines set up for you. This way you can get right to designing without having to worry about the edges of your artwork.
And by the way…
DO NOT FORGET TO ACCOUNT FOR THE BLEED WHEN YOU DESIGN! (sorry for yelling, I just wanted to make sure you heard me)
Hey this was really helpful, the templates of course. Not that I didn’t know about the bleed area for print designs, but it made it much easier to understand what exactly the sizes were for your cards. because to be honest, I really couldn’t tell just by looking at the “stencil ” gallery. Maybe put the templates on the gallery page for other designers to grab, without having to search all over for them like I did…could be really helpful