What is bleed?
Bleed is the extra band of color or image that extends beyond the cut line. Because cutting can shift slightly, a missing bleed can leave a thin white edge on the finished piece. The printer specifies the size of the bleed; there is no single universal value.
A dieline has three boundaries: the cut line, the bleed and the safe zone. The cut line is where the board is actually cut. Bleed extends outward from that line and the safe zone extends inward. Keeping the three apart in the file prevents problems such as white edges or clipped text.
Bleed is for background color, patterns and photos that run all the way to the edge. If these elements stop exactly at the cut line, a small shift in cutting shows blank paper at the edge. If you extend them into the bleed, the shift is tolerated. Thin frames are the opposite case: a shift makes one side of the frame look heavier than the other, so avoid thin lines close to the edge.
How large the bleed should be depends on the printer, the machine and the board. Ask your printer for their value before preparing the file; that value outranks any figure you find online.
Safe zone
The safe zone is the mirror image of bleed: the area set inward from the cut line where text and logos should stay. If critical elements sit outside it, a cutting shift can push them to the edge or clip them. Legal statements, the product name and the logo should always stay inside the safe zone. Your printer specifies the width of this area as well.
How you do this in Grapxo
Grapxo applies a fixed bleed and a fixed safe zone; you cannot change them by writing values into the brief. If your printer asks for a different value, you adjust the file to it yourself. In the die-cut PDF the bleed and safe-zone lines come on separate layers.
For more, see Dieline, bleed and safe zone.
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