What is a safe zone in album design?

Short

Safe zone is a 13mm area around the edges of your album spread. It’s 3mm bleed plus 10mm in from the bleed. You need to make sure nothing critical is in this space and any images in this area bleed all the way off the edge of the page.

Long

The safe zone consists of two areas: the bleed and the margin.

Bleed area is a 3mm space around the edges of the spread that is going to be trimmed off, so when designing try not to have any important details (for example faces) present at the very edges of your album spreads.

The margin distance is an extra 10mm space counted from the trim line towards the inside of the spread.
In symmetrical designs with white border having that space blank from the edges is particularly important, as it will help us maintain the look of each spread even after the trimming has been done.

Essentially the safe zone requirement is there to ensure each spread is even-looking and with no thin lines around the edges. Maintaining that distance improves the look of the whole album drastically and luckily each design software has its way to help with that.

Applying safe zone in your design software

In SmartAlbums, Fundy and AlbumStomp you can relax and forget about that setting. If you choose our lab’s preset, each template will have our safe zone restrictions automatically applied.

If using any other design software, look for margin settings and type in the correct value (mm will convert to inches upon approval). It’s important you use the margin box only and leave the bleed settings at 0 value, as bleed area is trimmed off from your album size, not added first and then trimmed off.

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