What are the red & green dotted lines on my design?

Our online design studio is built to fit a range of different template sizes. With this in mind, we have implemented some helpful guidelines for you to be able to get all your important photos and text within the printed areas. You will see a black solid line and a red and green dotted line around the edge of the pre designed templates.

With your artwork, you are looking to have your important parts of the image and any text on your designs to be within the GREEN dotted line. This is known as the ‘Safe’ area and will definitely get printed onto your designs without the risk of getting cut off. Anything past the RED dotted line is at risk of being cut off during the production process, so you should refrain from having anything important past these lines. The black line around the edge of the template is the very edge of the page, so you should not put anything past these lines as it will NOT get printed.

The RED dotted line:

This is the cut off line and is the final trimmed area of the page. This is where the ‘Bleed’ occurs and will allow the ink in your images to run off the edge of the page.

The GREEN dotted line:

A safe area where you can include all the important information and images and it is not at risk of getting cut off in the printing or production process.

You have the option of having a border around the images if you do not want anything to be cut into. If you would like this border, you will need to have your images and text up to the red dotted line. The guideline is named as the ‘Safe’ area to make sure that you are aware of the printing guidelines and understand that as the customer, it is your responsibility to make sure that your images are within these guidelines and, if they go past, they will most likely be trimmed down and not included in your finished product.

Wherever possible, if you do not want a border around the page, we recommend that your images sit just past the RED dotted line which will then allow the 3mm of ‘bleed’ to compensate for any movement during the printing and production process.