NinerMan, you're absolutely right about keeping important page elements a safe distance from the trim edge. That's why they call it a "safety" margin. Each press has different tolerances (ask the printer for their advice), but I think the default measure most people use is the same as the bleed, as you say ... .125" (1/8th of an inch), or 0p9 (nine points) if you're a pica person.

In an earlier comment here by JPadilla, he suggested a follow-up article on this very topic of safety margins. Maybe one day ...

InDesign has three different page previews: Trim (showing the end result of a bleed after trimming, the default Preview), Bleed (showing the overhanging bleed allowance to make sure you extended items enough into it), and Slug (showing slug allowance if you included one). A great feature request would be for a Safety Margin preview, I think!

The vertical dimension should be .25" bigger, not .123". The document height should be 9.25".

Otherwise, a great article.

Hi, since I published the story, I've received a couple e-mails from commercial printers, with better info on *why* you need a bleed. I had said you might end up with slivers of paper showing through because of how the paper might shift slightly while running through the press. But actually, the problem would occur during the *trimming* stage -- misregistration is a separate issue.
As an astute printer in the U.K. said, "The real reason for bleed is more mundane: It is because at the trimming stage, the physical action of the guillotine on the piles of printed paper cannot ever guarantee a perfect cut - even on the most expensive guillotines." ;-) I love astute readers.

A reader responded via email with questions about the best way to do bleeds in Illustrator. Since others might be wondering the same thing I thought it'd help to post my response publicly.

Specifically, the reader thought it'd be better to leave the Illustrator artboard at its trim size (6" x 9" in the example) and then use the Direct Select tool too drag artwork elements out onto the pasteboard, into the bleed area; instead of increasing the artboard to match the bleed allowance, as I said in the article.

My response: What you're saying is only correct if you'll be outputting the artwork directly from Illustrator. You need to do it that way so Illustrator can place the cropmarks correctly.

But the situation I was describing was not what to do if you're printing separations or making a PDF directly from Illustrator. It was that a layout artist needed to import the cover artwork into a 6x9 layout and the artwork was only 6x9.

Assuming that you're going to importing it into a layout, if you're importing an Illustrator CS2 or CS3 file as a native document ... an .ai file ... into InDesign, what I described is exactly correct. AI files in these versions cannot include bleed allowances. (In previous versions of Illustrator, they could and did. It is a frustrating thing for those who grew up with Illustrator.)

If you're going to save it from Illustrator as an EPS or as a PDF for importing into QuarkXPress or InDesign, either method works ... make the artboard bigger or add artwork into the pasteboard's bleed area (since CS2/CS3 EPS's and PDFs can include bleeds).

The reason my method -- make the artboard bigger -- still works is that you're not depending on Illustrator to add the crops, the layout program will be doing that. So, I wrote about the one method that will *always* work given the situation described, and also to keep the article to a reasonable length. ;-)

The issue of Illustrator CS2/CS3 not including bleed amounts in its native file format has to do with making its internal file structure compliant with PDF/X standards. Look inside your Illustrator CS2/CS3 folder for the ReadMe.pdf, there's a blurb about it there.

Also, David Blatner and I discussed this issue in the InDesignSecrets podcast, episode 45, a couple months ago: http://indesignsecrets.com/indesignsecrets-podcast-045.php
(there's a link to the transcript of the podcast there, too); and Mordy Golding, author of the Real World Illustrator books, wrote about it in his blog too:
http://rwillustrator.blogspot.com/2006/01/eps-is-dead-to-me-or-is-it.html

Hope this helps. I love this kind of back-and-forth with readers, keep 'em coming!