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Why do you need a half-inch margin around a magazine page (pre-printing/in InDesign)?
I’m working with InDesign, and every blank magazine template I download is set to have an eighth inch bleed area plus a half inch margin all the way around the page. I understand that there needs to be an eighth inch for bleeding & trimming, but I don’t get the purpose of the half inch margins, are they necessary, and if so, why?
side-note: ultimate goal is an 8.5″x8.5″ booklet
thanks. i guess the main trouble is that a lot of templates are set up incorrectly. the space for printer notes & such should be Outside the bleed marks, so the document needs to be set up with a 0.5″ Slug with 0″ margins. (you can adjust these after clicking ‘new document’, a window pops up/or click file > document setup) if it is set up as 0.5″ Margins then they show up Inside the bleed marks cutting the size of your actual document. just wanted to explain that for anyone else who might be as lost as i was. =]
Actually, yes, the slug is outside the bleed and is for notes to the printer, etc. The templates are set up correctly (try downloading free templates from printing service companies: do you think all of them would be incorrect?) The margin is there because if you look at standard published magazines, there is usually some margin provided. Pages can shift when printed, and also there is what is called “creep” in bound books and magazines (having to do with the thickness of the object depending on the actual number of pages). You will never have a document set so there are no margins: if you look at templates for almost any kind of print project, there is bleed, which is the allowance for making sure a full background color or image, when trimmed, does not show white edges, and there’s the margin and what’s inside that margin is sometimes referred to the “safe area”. Because nothing is perfect, you want to keep all important items, whether text or images that should not be cut off or cropped, within that safe area, not going over into the margin allowance.
A .5 inch margin is just a standard that many printers use for magazines and similar items. One of the mistakes beginners make is to push things to what should be the physical edge of the page, not realizing that physical edge can shift during printing, binding, and trimming.