Always Have Bleed

Summary

  • Always plan to have a printing bleed around the edge of your cards. 1/8 inches is standard.
  • Have a safe zone too
  • Layouts make this easy (see the built-in layouts)
  • Can use png overlays from templates to make sure it fits
  • Trim option is what is used everywhere in Squib
  • Trim_radius also lets you show your cards off like how they’ll really look

An example is also shown in The Squib Way pt 1: Zero to Game.

What is a bleed?

As mentioned in the summary above, we mostly add a cut and a safe rectangle on cards for guides based on the poker card templates like the one from TheGameCrafter.com ( PDF template). See below section templates for more templates as illustration and help. This is important to do as early as possible because this affects the whole layout. In most print-on-demand templates, we have a 1/8-inch border that is larger than what is to be used, and will be cut down (called a bleed). Rather than have to change all our coordinates later, let’s build that right into our initial prototype in the first stage. Squib can trim around these bleeds for things like showcase, hand, save_sheet, save_png, and save_pdf.

See for more details about a discussion whether or not to use a bleed on boardgamegeek.com and specifically one of the comments.

  • Crop - the area which is going to be cut out to meet the final size requirements.
  • Bleed - an extra printed area outside of the crop, to ensure that the printing runs all the way to the edge of the printed, cut piece.

Usage

We can add such cut and safe zones with the available DSL methods cut_zone and safe_zone or by using a layout which specifies the cut and safe zone which are later used with the layout option for the rect method.

Layout:

cut:
  x: 0.125in
  y: 0.125in
  width: 2.5in
  height: 3.5in
  radius: 0

In your Squib script:

rect layout: 'cut', stroke_color: :white

Or by using the DSL methods:

cut_zone radius: 0,  stroke_color: :white
safe_zone radius: 0, stroke_color: :red

Afterwards, you can save the whole card including the bleed or without the bleed by using the mentioned trim method without affecting all other parts of your layout:

save_png ... trim: '0.125in' ...
save_pdf sprue: 'drivethrucards_1up.yml', trim: '0.125in'

Example

In this example we see the cut zone and the safe zone inside the bleed.