Adobe Indesign Archives - The Marsid M&M Group Blog

Crops, Bleeds and Margins: a Brief Walkthrough for Designers

Crops, Bleeds and Margins are three of the most important factors in setting up a design for print, but often go overlooked. These elements basically ensure that all images and text that extend to the edge of the page are not cut off, and that there are no white borders around the page from where it is cut.

Practically all of our print jobs are printed on sheets that are larger than the finished size, and then cut down to the actual size. This is what we call bleeds and allows for images and colors to be printed to the very edge of a page.

Crop marks are another very helpful piece to include in a design. These basically point to where the actual file will be cut. This tells the printer where to cut, and how much of the bleed to cut off.

Lastly, there are margins which define the live space of a printed piece. This area is a box inside of the page that is usually an 1/4″ from the edge of the page all around. The margins provide a safe area where all text and images should be so that they are not accidentally trimmed.

The best way to understand crops, bleeds and margins is to see it visually. Check out the video below that goes over all three elements and explains how to save a PDF properly for print:

Standard letter page in Adobe InDesign:

Business Card Setup in Adobe Illustrator:

You can read more in depth guides about designing for print in our info center or get a quote for your next print job at mmprint.com!

InDesign Tips to Speed Up Your Catalog Design

We sort out great websites for you to download free for commercial use fonts or free for commercial use vector art and write tutorials and tips for designers.

Why do we even bother? Well, honestly, it makes our job easier!

Truth is, we can use the most state-of-the-art printing presses like the Konica Minolta C8000 we acquired recently, but if the files are not print-ready and well crafted, the outcome can literally be garbage…that goes in our paper recycle bins of course!

In my experience:

80% of the outcome of a print job is dependent on the design files
Most times, a graphic designer acts as a liaison between us (the catalog printer) and the customer
Many times the customer is the designer

Therefore, we sincerely want the designer/customer to be proficient with their design tools and so, we offer the resources to learn how to do so.

Keep reading to learn how InDesign can speed up your catalog design and make you a truly efficient designer…

Adobe InDesign Gives You Design Superpowers

Well, not really. But it does make the process of designing a catalog 10x easier!

One of the most tedious part of designing a catalog for print is well, repetition.

What would you find repeated throughout a catalog?

Headers
Footers
Backgrounds
Logos
Watermarks

What can we do about it?

Adobe InDesign answers that question for us with “Master Pages”.

Notice how in the top area of the image there is a graphic of a page labeled “A-Master”. Notice the pages below it are all labeled “A”. That means that any changes done to the A-Master page will also appear in all pages labeled “A”.

Now isn’t that nifty??

You can place any repetitive information that will be found throughout your catalog in the A-Master page and it will be found on all of your pages marked A.

If you find that you need to have some of the pages with a different layout, you have 2 options…

Simply drag the page labeled “[None]” to the page that will be different. This removes the A-Master layout
Create a new Master such as B-Master so that you can use a totally different layout on other pages

This feature alone will save you countless hours that will be better spent designing the body of the catalog.

Now that’s efficiency.

Here is a youtube video from Lynda.com that explains how to use InDesign Master Pages in detail:

[tentblogger-youtube tBC2ufj7Pvc]

Please comment with any InDesign advice or tips you may have and don’t forget to share this post!

Creating Outlines from Type in Illustrator and InDesign

Why Do We Need to Outline Our Type?

Before sending a file to a printer, there are a few important steps that must be considered. One of those is making sure that the type in the document is turned into outlines. If the printer needs to make an adjustment to the file (fix color, adjust bleeds, etc.) and the type is not outlined, there could be font issues that cause the copy to change or re-flow. Sometimes these changes may not be noticed until after the job is printed. It is a very simple process that only takes a moment. Once it is done, the type is turned from a type box to vector outlines and can no longer be edited. This tutorial is for Adobe programs such as Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Indesign. Always remember to check your copy before converting to outlines, because it can not be edited afterward.

Outlines Versus Type

How to Create the Outlined Type

In the above Image, the top line of text is type while the bottom line is outlines. As you can see the outlines no longer have editable type; they have the individual vector points of the outlined shapes. In order to outline the type, one needs to select the type box as a whole so that it looks like the below image.

Selecting a Text Box

Then if you are on a PC, press CTRL + SHIFT + O, or if you are on a Mac, press CMD + SHIFT + O. The type can also be outlined from the top menu by selecting “type” then selecting “create outlines” from the drop down menu. Afterwards your type will turn to paths and look like this image below.

Outlined Type

Finished Type Outlines

Now the type is outlined and safe to send to the printer. Remember to check that the other parts of the document are ready to go to pre-press before sending it to your printer. Outlined type can be helpful when creating typographical designs; it removes the need to work with type boxes and allows direct editing of the shape of the characters directly.