Phase II -- Poster Design
This phase discusses some basic poster design considerations and how to set up the poster page properly before you start placing items on the page.
The first thing you should do is select a paper size! Select an Industry Standard paper size that is smaller than the Maximum Size specified by the Conference Specifications. When you are ready to print (Phase IV) matching the Synchronized Paper Sizes from the Z3100 list of papers to select the plot size that most closely approximates the Conference Page Specifications will be simple.
Making the Poster match the Specs
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1. Choose your weapon. PowerPoint is the traditional favorite but it is designed to make slides, not posters. It works but there are better tools.
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Microsoft Publisher -- Choose a standard poster size and use the layout tools that will produce quality results. It has some difficulty printing large format posters with lots of high resolution pictures, however. -
Macintosh Pages -- an excellent layout tool with standard poster sizes, great photo processing tools, very robust printing capabilities.
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Adobe InDesign -- Available on either PC or Mac, very good but different interface with lots of options to make your poster look exactly how you want it to look.
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2. Define your page size using File - Page Setup or some such method within the software of your choice.
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Allow at least a 0.25” margins on all sides of your poster!
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Enter the dimensions of a standard size rather than defining your own... if possible. The example above uses a Custom Size setting the page up for an Arch E poster with 0.25” margins.
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3. Load in the information.
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4. Proof read it. Save.
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5. If you decide to change paper size in Page Setup, All of your text boxes and graphics will be scaled and reorganized. Prepare to re-construct your poster. Publisher and Pages do a much better job of scaling than PowerPoint, which is one of the reasons that I prefer these programs over PowerPoint.
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6. Proof read it again. Save again.
