Hahaha, loved it!
You should for sure do more rants, this one was quite funny but also very true.

I mean the only reason why an ad shouldn’t have bleed is if the ad incorporates whitespace… but even at that it’s a visual thing, it’s as if you are bleeding off with the white. The thing that bothers me about non-bleed Ads is that it seems enclosed, you see the box and the view has no where else to go. I find that it hinders the viewers response of using their creative minds.

Good point. Unless they’re trying to make an ad for a picture frame, they should do it with bleed.

Nice weblog you have here. Keep up the good work!

((By the way, you forgot to rename your tags for this post.))

Yes many magazines STILL charge extra for full bleed. They also charge two and three color rates, despite being four color process throughout.

Magazines should simplify their rate cards and stop charging extras where none exist.

i dont know how it is abroad but in Kuwait most clients choose bleeding. actually the magazine chooses for you (they just provide you with bleed size). Personally i would rather go without bleeding since I like the white frame, it creates some breathing space around my ad. Same way when I develop my 35mm film, i always tell the photoguy to leave a white frame around my picture.

dragan, i disagree.

the bleed/no bleed is almost always your choice in major magazines (for a full-page ad). and it normally doesn’t cost any extra. and if it does, it’s a small percentage of the total cost.

and why not pay for the bleed? in most cases for a 4 colour ad + 1 spot colour + the full page + position = $5,000 – $15,000. why not pay the extra 0.01% for a bleed?

and how will a no bleed ad stand out more? the entire publication is no bleed. so by default it’s the pages with bleeds that stand out. plus how would you know if yours was the only ad without a bleed? you wouldn’t until the magazine was already published, and by then it would be too late.

and i have never seen a full-page magazine ad where the concept is dependent on a no bleed situation.

but yeah, i can see your point about every rule having it’s limitations — especially the one about the cheese. but i still stand by my statement that if you have a choice between bleed or no bleed, to choose bleed.

but… but… I’m allergic to cheese

No bleeds should be used sparingly, when the concept demands it. And usually, the concept doesn’t demand it. As a publisher (who doesn’t charge different prices for two- and three-colour and bleeds), we encourage the bleeds for effect. One of our (now-defunct) competitors, I recall, did an issue where many ads ran without bleeds—probably because they couldn’t be bothered resizing clients’ ads to its larger page format. We try to do so: just simple good sense to help your client when it cannot help itself.