I am making a conference poster in powerpoint and it will become a A0 poster when it is printed. Problem is, I am having problems deciding how big my pictures and text should be as I have no idea how the screen will proportion itself...

Any ideas what size font I should be using - or poster tips in general?

Hi Chrisrolinski,

I am not sure I understand the issue. I think you can make your picture say A5 on Powerpoint and this can be enlarged to A0 by the printers. In fact I think you can make the poster also in another programme and as long as the proportions are right it can be enlarged by the printers to poster level.

I think it may work better the other way round: write on a flipover chart the text and draw / put pictures on it, if you are happy with this then condense it into a smaller proportion.
I think in general it is better to put less info on a poster than trying to fill it up completely

Ah! So the proportions of the Powerpoint slide are enlarged by the printers! Duh - I guess I should have just thought about it!

Thanks.

I always do my own posters in PowerPoint but I just set the size of the slide to A0 and zoom in to work on each section. Good luck!

For more tips, see here

http://www.postgraduateforum.com/showmessage.asp?thread=4403&cat

Look at posters stuck up around your uni.

i find powerpoint really clumsy for making posters.

that said, i have an electronic copy of a poster a friend of mine made in powerpoint. it's sized to A0 size and the body text is in 32-point font, headings in 93-point.

good luck!

I think powerpoint is pretty good for doing posters.

Make sure your body text is 20 pt min.

Theres another thread kicking around with links to some really good sites.

does your uni have a communications department or anything.. you can usually get a template sent.
if you set it up in powerpoint you can then print it so that the a4 page will look as the poster will so you can judge text size etc

The visual aids guys at my work said you should always set the powerpoint slide to the size of the poster (A0, etc) and then zoom in to work on it. If you make it in A4 and they have to enlarge it then fonts can get funny-looking and pictures can get pixelly.

I like using powerpoint - making a poster is hard enough without having to learn how to use a new piece of software.

Good luck.

Thank you for all your help guys! I've just finished the first draft. So I am off to get some sleep.


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Try not to do the layout on a small version and get it blown up as the graphs and pictures end up not having enough pixels and get blury. You can set A0 and panorama or portrait and then just view 100% on the screen. This makes the design easier. To check the size of your fonts you can print one corner of the A0 on a normal black and white printer (in printing options).