topic Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed? in Ask a Question

Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cat — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 02:08:17 GMT

As several folks have noted in recent threads, Zazzle has started issuing new warnings for the placement of images and text. It seems that any text extending beyond the green lines is now flagged, as are images extending beyond the bleed line. I'm very confused/concerned about this, especially in light of the fact that at least one designer has reported receiving an email saying that any future orders of the product would be cancelled due to text extending beyond the green safe line (And the hits keep coming....... - Zazzle)

I can understand giving a warning to the designer/customer, but what about cases where the placement is intentional? In the example below (Elegant Long Stemmed Red Rose Romantic Wedding Invitation | Zazzle) I'm now getting two flags, one because the rose image extends beyond the bleed line (it's supposed to!) and one because the tip of the swashes on the word "wedding" extend a hair over the green line (I don't really see it as a problem if the very tip of the tail gets cut off... and there are other designs where the tails are supposed to extend beyond the edges - those are getting flagged too.)

Are sales of these products going to be cancelled? Do I need to edit all of my designs so that everything is either inside of the green line or right at the bleed line? Do I really need to crop the image EXACTLY to the red bleed line? What if the customer transfers to something with a different aspect ratio? The whole point of designing it this way was to leave wiggle room for that inevitability.

I'm guessing that this new "feature" is not yet fully rolled out because I'm not seeing the warning on all products that have these "issues." I'm guessing I will soon though...

I'd really appreciate it if someone from Zazzle could please clarify this.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Badeesie — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:07:19 GMT

The warnings also show up on invitations or announcements with a photo taking up half the page and the text going on the other half. The images apparently either need to be 100% within the green line or extending past the red line on all four sides. Using a rectangular mask seems to fix that, but I'd rather not have to remake my old products and lose all my stats just to add a mask that doesn't actually change the appearance of the invitation.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

ColsCreations — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:30:33 GMT

The warning text in your screenshot, this sounds like the same thing that has always existed with the Avery binders:
technical-issues/extend-to-solid-red-line-error-for-binder

With binders, images have to be completely inside the green safe zone, OR extend past the red line. If a part of the image falls on or between the green and red lines, you get the error.

On your linked invitation example above, I went into the design tool and just destroyed it, moving the image and text fields all over - inside the lines, outside the lines, in between lines, WAY outside the zones etc... and could not make it produce the warning in the Design Tool or on the product page no matter what I did. I went as far as adding it to my cart with things crazy outside the boundaries and still no warnings. So maybe this is a warning only the Creator gets?

Then I picked some of my own random products to try to make the warning appear on. Playing cards, folded greeting card, postcard, tissue paper, business card. I moved images and text all over the place and the only time I was able to make the warning appear was on the business card when I moved text past the green line.

So basically I have no idea what is going on but have been reading the posts about this with concern. A Mod did confirm somewhat recently that all orders are reviewed by a human for quality control before processing and that they can tweak things to prevent cancellations for small errors (paraphrasing here) so maybe that is getting too overwhelming and they are moving to forcing Creators to abide by the guidelines now. Or, it's a "glitch" which we all love to hope is the reason for weird unexpected/unexplained developments. 😛

@Cat

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cat — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:38:32 GMT

I didn't think of adding a mask to the red line - that would certainly work, but it would be a crazy hoop to make us jump through!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cat — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 04:54:08 GMT

@ColsCreations Very interesting. I went through the marketplace and most of the wedding invites on page 1 have images and/or text (well, swashes on letters anyhow) extending beyond the red line, but no matter what I did, I couldn't get the warning. So hopefully you're correct and this is just a note for designers. Of course, it's only happening on some of my designs - I've got thousands of designs with that rose in many different colors, and some are getting the error, some aren't. Seems pretty random - hence my bet that it's still being rolled out.

If they just want to give us a head's up to be sure that the design reflects what we intended to do I don't have an issue with it. If they're going to start cancelling orders over design choices that the computer logic just doesn't understand, I think it presents a major problem - especially since a huge number of products have images and/or text tails extending beyond the bleed.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

DancingPelican — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 05:10:48 GMT

I am suddenly getting the yellow warning sign on many of my invitations, business cards and more that have graphics or text intentionally placed where part of the said graphics or text are off the page. This is a huge problem! Here are some examples: https://www.zazzle.com/soft_pink_watercolor_floral_girl_baby_shower_invitation-256695653559505920. https://www.zazzle.com/white_orchids_tropical_paradise_retirement_party_invitation-256828063244711048. https://www.zazzle.com/white_orchids_on_monstera_tropical_botanical_business_card-256099973569538909 I could go on, there are hundreds of designs that now show the yellow warning. I cannot move the graphics into the middle of the design, they are intended to be off to the side. These designs have a sales history.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

shoshannahscrib — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 09:07:38 GMT

I brought this topic up on another thread just commenting here to add that I find this extremely worrisome as well.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cristina — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 11:57:30 GMT

@DancingPelican I've tried adding these 3 products to my cart, and I didn't get any warning.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Windy — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:36:29 GMT

Same!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

DancingPelican — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:44:07 GMT

That's great to know! Thank you for testing them out!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

DancingPelican — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:44:24 GMT

Thanks!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

CreativeLeahG — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 12:51:56 GMT

When I design in Zazzle I have many images where I enlarge it so only part of the image is showing for different effects and designs, so as you note the image is intentionally far beyond the bleed line. If these are removed I have zero chance of editing them as there are far too many. This is a potential nightmare for yet more perfectly worthy products disappearing from the marketplace if that's what the plan is?

Please @Scott confirm what is taking place here.

Thank you

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Malissa — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 15:08:08 GMT

I was playing around with this using a png image with an empty background and where that background bled over the line I get the yellow warning...even though nothing was actually extended past the line. I had to shrink my image smaller than intended to avoid it so I abandoned the design. I really hope this is a glitch because I would say 95% of my products are full color bleed images where I intentionally have used only a certain area of the artwork and a good bit of the image bleeds past the safe lines.

I suppose using the cropping tool to make it exact could work, but I can't imaging having to edit and repost almost my entire shop. Not to mention the fact that with a full color bleed design the chances of some white space around the edges if it doesn't align perfectly during production becomes a huge issue.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cat — Sun, 17 Mar 2024 18:09:36 GMT

Well, it doesn't seem possible that they could be intending to disallow any product where the artwork extends beyond the red bleed line, because it seems like it would include the majority of the products in the marketplace!

But, since I do have access to the replace feature, I'm going through my designs and shrinking the text where the tails violate the green line - looks like anything that even touches that line is getting flagged. I sort of hate to make Zazzle deal with approving all those changes when the change is almost imperceptibly small... but who knows, maybe it will save them time looking at each order? It will at least take that issue off the table. Gah!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Marcia — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 18:25:51 GMT

@DancingPelican I opened up your monstera business card in the design tool & there's no warning showing for me. Nice design, btw!

I hope that's the case, just showing for us designers. Just about all of my thousands of products fall into this vortex.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

DancingPelican — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 19:39:31 GMT

Thanks, Marcia! From what I am hearing, this warning is only showing for the designer and not the customer. Good to know! 😊

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Scott — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:27:42 GMT

Here's a response from a member of our Product team:

Hello,
This is indeed an official feature that Zazzle has released for “Create your own” products in the Design Tool. An official announcement is still in the works, but we wanted to respond to the feedback and address some concerns.

The added warning is supposed to help users prevent unwanted unprinted borders, or important text or images from getting cut off. We added this because these issues are very common and cause printing and quality issues down the line.
If placement is intentional (like OP’s example where no important text is cut), please ignore the warning. We trust that experienced creators know the best way to design templates.
These warnings only appear for designs that “can be published”, this is why the original designer can always see them.
Your customers, or anyone editing a published template, will not see them.
Orders will NOT be cancelled for having a warning
The product’s ranking in search results will NOT be affected by these warnings.

Happy creating!

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

CreativeLeahG — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 22:56:49 GMT

Great, thank you for the reassurances Scott

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Windy — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 23:03:49 GMT

Fantastic! Many Creators were worried and will now be reassured.

Re: Are Designs where Text or Image Intentionally Bleeds off the Edge no longer Allowed?

Cat — Tue, 19 Mar 2024 00:07:39 GMT

Thanks so much Scott! Really appreciate the clarification.