Took me 3 hours to figure out a simple bleed setting in Illustrator

Honestly, I was making a business card for a friend and the printer kept rejecting the file. I checked the margins, the colors, everything. After like 3 hours of messing around I realized I forgot to extend the background art into the bleed area by even 1/8th of an inch. Has anyone else had a simple setting trip them up for way too long?

2 comments

2 Comments

gavin92811d ago

Started doing a checklist before sending anything to print now honestly. I write down every single setting like document size, color mode, bleed, and whether the background art extends past the trim edge. I tick them off one by one and it saves me from those dumb mistakes where I spend hours on one tiny thing. Also started making a test print on plain paper first just to see if the margins look right before I even bother with the printer file. Those little steps have saved me from pulling my hair out over stuff like forgetting to set the bleed or leaving the wrong color profile on.

ross.jessica11d ago

Whoa wait you forgot to extend the art into the bleed area by just 1/8th of an inch and that was the whole problem lol? I would be SO mad at myself after three hours of checking everything else. That's one of those things where once you see it you just want to facepalm into the desk. I've definitely been there with other software though, like spending forever on a CSS thing only to realize I missed a semicolon or something small like that. At least you got it sorted in the end, right? Better than having to redo the whole design from scratch.