Gutter Bleed Design

I am deep into the design of a wiro bound reference book that is over 400 pages.

Gutter bleed design.

The dotted green line represents gutter. In the book printing world bleed in particular is an important concept to understand. We touched on full bleed printing last week when we looked at making a print ready pdf. I am creating it in sections to eventually gather the section files into an indesign book.

This is a visual reference to stop you from crowding the finished edge the solid red line with text and any graphics that don t require bleed. A full bleed describes when a project has been designed with an image or images that touches the cut edge on all four sides. For example you can type 0 125 in or 3 mm even if your document uses picas or something else. For example if you are designing a postcard with an image you want to cover the entire background you would need the image to extend beyond the edge of your design by 125 inches typical bleed size.

Scroll and then click bleed and slug to expand the panel. Today let s look a little deeper at this. And for some book layouts properly applying bleed settings can be the difference between professional design and not. Type a bleed value in any units.

The example below shows the appropriate use of gutter for the text along the top left and bottom edges of the design. They all have the same sets of master pages. Set the same bleed on all sides or click the chain icon to set different values for the top bottom inside and outside settings.