You should be bleeding

No, printing is not so bad that you'll hurt yourself! ??Bleed? is a printing term that refers to printing that goes beyond the edge of the sheet after trimming,? according to Wikipedia. The reason you need to bleed your ink to the very edge of the paper is that printing presses aren't perfect ? they shift the paper ever so slightly sometimes so that they don't cut in the same place every time. Have you ever noticed the edge of a magazine page that has a little bit of color from the next page on it? That's the bleed from the other page. It's not that big of a deal on a magazine page, but what about the poster you just spent hundreds of dollars printing? If it has a blue background, but the very tip-top of it is white because you didn't bleed, you can't blame the printer. You should have bled your design!

The average bleed amount is 1/8 of an inch. So wherever your color would have normally stopped on the page, add another 1/8 of an inch to that area.

Graphic design software like Adobe InDesign has dialog boxes just to fix the bleed! It can't get much easier, actually. You just go to the Document Setup Dialog Box and choose Bleed and Slug (just Bleed on other graphic design software) and set the bleed to 1/8 of an inch. If it's in millimeters, as could be the case with some graphic software, choose 3mm to 5mm. That is standard for millimeters, the measurement that is generally used in Europe.

Less is more in all design

If you think your design looks a little crowded, it is. If you think it looks a little sparse, your design is probably just right. Don't add a bunch of images and text that's not necessary to the design just to fill space. If you add too much, it'll be hard for the reader or viewer to know what to focus on. Your message won't get through unless you clear all the rubble.

Ask someone else to review your design ? once you spend hours or days designing something, it can be hard to get rid of any part of it. It'll be easier to get other people's unbiased opinions on what should be cut.

Use a grid

Graphic design programs like Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress use grids to help you align your elements. Aligned elements look much cleaner and contribute to a clear design. Use them. They are your friends. You can use as many columns as you want. The more columns you use, the more flexible your design will be because the columns will be smaller.

Invert for more impact

Inverting means instead of the usual black text on a white background, you use white (or light) text on a dark background. Inverted images or text is a great, simple way to get a big impact on something that might otherwise be blah. Just make sure that you don't use this tactic on font smaller than 10 pts. Inverted fonts get to be hard to read when the font gets that small. Inverting the name of your business on brochures and other print materials will get people's attention because your business name should already be large. The inversion will give your business name an unexpected pop.