Safe zone

Safe zone: The inner 1/8" margin where critical artwork — logos, text, icons — must sit so it isn't clipped at trim.

The safe zone is the opposite of bleed: it's the inner margin inside the trim line where you keep anything that absolutely cannot be cut off. Standard practice on playing cards is 1/8" inside the trim, giving you the same drift tolerance the press cutter has on the outside. Keep logos, names, court-card faces, pip indices, sponsor marks, copyright notices, and any required legal text inside the safe zone — anything that would look broken or wrong if it lost a sliver of its edge. Backgrounds, atmospheric patterns, edge gradients, and decorative borders are perfectly fine to push past the safe zone into the bleed area; they're designed to extend off the card. A common mistake on first-time decks is laying out a court card face so the king's crown or shoulder lines run right to the trim — at scale, half the deck comes out with the crown clipped on one side. Designing inside the safe zone fixes the problem before it ever reaches the press. Mr. Playing Card templates pre-mark the safe zone as a guide layer so you can drag artwork toward the edge until you bump the line, and stop.