printing brochure

I'm printing a 8.5 x 11 brochure and want to make the edges bleed. It keeps printing out with margins.

Also, does anyone know what the rules are concering the dimensions of a tri-fold brochure?

Thanks!

John.

On a standard inkjet printer, you will always get borders on your image. The printer's paper feed has to hold the paper somewhere, which is the edges of the paper. There are very few printers without this limitation. In order to get a bleed edge, you have to print on a piece of paper larger than what you want, and then trim the paper down to the dimensions you want. This happens even with professional printing.

Most consumer inkjets cannot print on anything larger than 8.5" width, but you may get lucky and have/find one that prints at 11" width. See if ya do. If you can, just print what you want on a 11x17 inch piece of paper and crop it down to 8.5x11 after printing.

As for rules of a tri-fold brochure. There really isn't many rules. But to have tri-folds that match up with each other when folded, each fold has to be 3.67 inches wide.

the 3.67 thing works if you don't have anything REALLY critical that has to register between panels, but in my experiences and the guildlines I give my clients that submit digital media are as follows:

Anything you wish to bleed MUST extend beyond the edge of the sheet 1/8th inch (.125")
Anything you don't want to bleed MUST have at least 3/16th (.1875") margin

Now about the panels (the 3.67" thing)
If you use those values (3 panels of 3.67") you dont take into account the paper consumed by the folding of the sheet. Trust me when I say, when it is being prepared for folding they will trim it a little off center to account for the 1/16 of an inch of paper that you didn't. ( I know because "We" do). 1/16th of an inch isn't much but if you have things that need to line up between panels it can be a HUGE problem.

This is what we use,

Folds In 1/16" Shorter	Back Cover	Front Cover
3 5/8"	3 11/16"	3 11/16"

Inside of Front Cover	Inside of Back Cover	Folds In 1/16" Shorter

3 11/16" 3 11/16" 3 5/8"

dang!.... I did pretty good!

:D

I thought those were images....