ITC Banner

Creating a Poster in PowerPoint

Creating a NEW poster:

Office Button > New > Blank presentation or "From design template"

Sizing the Poster:

  1. Design > Page Setup
  2. In the Slides sized for box, select Custom.
  3. Type in the width and height of the poster.
    The maximum width and PowerPoint can go is 56 inches. If you need a larger poster, set the page size to exactly half of the finished poster size and then we will enlarge it proportionally when printing. For example, if you need a poster 72” x 42”, then set the page size to 36” x 21” . Please note that our printer is 42 inches wide. Therefore, we can print up to 42" wide by as long as you need.

    We can only enlarge proportionally so be sure the aspect ratio of your page size in PowerPoint matches that of the final poster size. Failure to so may result in a poster that is not printable at the size you need.

    Allow a 1 inch margin around all sides of the poster to prevent cropping or a .5 inch margin if designing at half size. Note that we print in square foot increments so we also charge in square foot increments. Round both dimensions up to the nearest foot.

  4. Select slide orientation (Portrait or Landscape).

  5. Click OK.

Working with Pictures:

Pictures imported from web sites are low resolution images. These images are for on-screen presentations and web page use only. If used for 35mm slides or posters they will appear fuzzy looking. Pictures for use on a poster should be scanned at 150 dpi at 100% of the size they will be used on the poster. If designing at 50% scale (ie: 18x30 for a 36x60 poster) then scan at 300 dpi. Save the image as a high quality JPEG file.

Digital cameras provide a convenient method to capture images, however, the highest resolution should be used when capturing the photograph. Many digital cameras off er the option of saving files as JPEG or TIF. While the TIF file format is the most desirable, the JPEG format has a smaller file size. The best option would be to select the highest resolution and JPEG format on the camera and then save as TIF upon transferring the image to a computer.

Do not enlarge pictures once they are inserted into PowerPoint. If the image will be used larger in the poster than the original, it should be enlarged when scanned. Scan the original at a higher magnification or higher resolution to make up for the size difference.

Saving Your Poster to Send to the Printer:

Save your final poster to a separate file and make sure you make a backup on another file. Since
the file will no doubt be quite large, you will most likely not be able to save it to a small floppy disk. The ITC requests that you bring the poster file on a CD, or a USB Flash drive.

  1. From the Office button, click Save As.
  2. In the File name box, enter a new name for the poster. Use a name that is very descriptive of
    the poster….Conference name with date….ie. SITE May 2009.
  3. In all cases you should check the Embed TrueType option to the right of the screen. This will
    assure that your fonts will be printed, even if the service unit DOES NOT have the font on their computer.
  4. Click Save.

Other resources:

Home | Site Map | Contact Webmaster | ©2009 Instructional Technology Center | PO BOX 3976 | Atlanta, Georgia 30302-3976 | 404-413-8080 -- rev. 01/15/2009