8/14/2019 Creating a Poster in Power Point 1

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Creating a Poster in PowerPointLarge format inkjet printers (36 inches wide by any length) have become much more

common and are a good way to print a professional looking scientific poster. Such simple

 posters can be created using Microsoft PowerPoint, however PowerPoint has limitations. If 

you need to use advanced graphic drawing techniques, you may need to use a more powerfulgraphics program such as CorelDraw. Whatever you choose, make sure your printer can

 print from the program.

There are two parts to this lesson. The first will cover how to create a poster in PowerPoint

and the second will be give you tips on the actual graphic creation of the poster...what looks

good and what doesn’t.

 

How to create a Poster in PowerPoint

 We assume that by now you have become familiar with working in PowerPoint. If 

you are unsure of how to do something, please refer to the PowerPoint lessons.1. Open PowerPoint. Select Blank Presentation.

2. Choose File - Page Setup.

3. The Page Setup dialog box will open. In the Slides sized for box, select Custom.

Type in the height and width of your poster. For this class, your poster should be 24

inches by 36 inches.

NOTE: Be sure to check with whoever will be printing your poster to make sure

they can accommodate the size you need. Some printers are 24 inches wide and

some are 36. Every printer also has some room on all sides of the paper where it

can’t actually print. These are called gripper margins and are different on all

 printers. Ask your printer how much space you need to leave on the edges to allowfor this. We usually leave about 1 inch on each side.

Posters printed at UNL Print shop can be 36 inches wide by any length with 1/2 inch

gripper margins.

4. Working with a large page size is going to be challenging. You will need to Zoom in

and out frequently to layout and add detail to your poster. To view your poster at the

actual size of 100%, change the percentage in the Zoom box. You will need to work 

really small when laying out the poster but when you are working on the details you

will need to zoom into specific areas.

For zooming in and out quickly, hold the CTL key down while you scroll forward

and backward with the wheel on your mouse (Intelli mouse on PC).

5. Use the guidelines to help line up objects on your poster.

6. Use the align tools to line up images and text on your poster (Lesson 8).

7. Use the drawing tools to create lines, rectangles or other shapes and then adjust the

colors and fills to add design elements to your poster.

8. Save your poster frequently while creating it. The file will most likely be large.

When finished you will need to FTP it to the location specified in the assignment.

If you create a poster that is too large and have to reduce the size, you will also need

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to reduce the resolution of the images if possible.

NOTE: Save your document frequently and make multiple backup copies in several

different places!!!

9. Adding graphic images. Review the lesson about Image resolution and scanning

(we will be coveing this in Week 7) to make sure your images are at the proper 

resolution needed for a good print. Insert images into your poster with the Insert -

Picture - From File commands (refer to Lesson 9). You can use either TIFF or 

JPEG files for images. It is best to ask the print shop manager which file type works

 best.

10. The poster's text can either be typed directly into PowerPoint or it can be pasted

from another program (highly recommended) into PowerPoint. Typing text directly

into a poster is tedious. It is much easier to create the text in a wordprocessor and

then copy and paste it into PowerPoint.

To copy and paste text into PowerPoint:

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1.

Select

the

text in

the

word proce

ssing

 progr 

am

and

copy

it by

selecti

ng

Edit -

Copy.

2.

Retur 

n to

Power 

Point.

3.

Click on the

Text

Box

in the

Draw

ing

Toolb

ar

and

then

drawa box

in the

 place

on

your 

 poster 

where

you

want

the

text to

 be.

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11. The poster titles should be readable from 15 feet away. It should be bold and bright

and easy to read. Use the Drawing toolbar to create a text box for your title.

NOTE: Remember to make sure the fonts you use to create your poster are also on

the computer of the print shop that will be printing your poster. If they do not have

the same fonts, PowerPoint automatically substitutes a font without telling you andyou could end up with a very strangely formatted poster. It is always best to ask first

 before you get a poster back that isn’t exactly what you had thought you would get.

All print shops will have common fonts such as Arial and Times Roman installed.

Ask before using other fonts.

12. Adding charts, graphs and tables. As with text, it is best to create your graphs and

charts in another PowerPoint file or in another program and then insert it into your 

 poster. To insert them into your poster, select Insert - Object - Create From File

and find the file. PowerPoint will insert the object onto your poster. This works

 better as you are working with smaller files when you create your graphs in another 

PowerPoint program rather than in the file with the poster.

You also have a choice of clicking the Link box in the Insert dialog box. Checking

the link box will link the two files together so if you make changes to the graph, it

will automatically update in the poster file. You will need to keep these files in the

same folder for this option to work.

13. The background of your poster can be a solid color, a gradiated color, a pattern or a

 picture. Just make sure that the text is still readable on top of your background.

Unlike projected slides, dark text on light backgrounds are preferred for posters.

 

Additional Tips

• You can import text from your word processor via copy and paste. You may have to

change the formatting of the pasted text. It rarely survives the translation process

unchanged.

• To facilitate locating files, create a single folder for all text, objects, and images you

will use in your poster rather than maintaining them in several different folders.

• Scanned pictures:

o Insert by choosing "insert picture" from the "insert" menu.

o Any image manipulation needs to be done before importing.

o Scan as a tiff file, CMYK rather than RGB if possible. This method will give

you truer colors. You will not see the difference on your computer screen but it

will improve the quality when you print the poster.

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