full bleed or margins?

I see a lot of people going full bleed with some or all of their portfolio pages. For a while I have been avoiding this because of the printing issue. To my knowledge, kinko / FedEx can’t print full bleed. You have to print on a larger piece of paper and then trim it down. I would be okay doing this for the few times you have to print your portfolio, but when you email your portfolio out and the company decides to print it, it won’t look good.

I can’t decide to do full bleed (I think it gives you more freedom with your portfolio and can make it more graphically appealing) or if I should stick with margins. On screen full bleed would work fine, but print it is annoying (an no company will print it and then cut off the boarder.

Thoughts?

I don’t think there’s an issue doing full bleed.

Most people who look at your portfolio will probably look at it on screen if you are e-mailing it out, and if they do print it they won’t be critiquing your margins knowing that they just printed it. Just keep it to a regular paper size (IE don’t do full bleed 8x8" square if you expect someone to print it themselves.)

There are some of the more professional book binding sites out there now that can do a properly trimmed full bleed bound portfolio for you if you’ve got the money.