Poster Printer Information

• Up to 600 dpi printed resolution
• CMYK color
• Paper types: HP Heavyweight Coated paper or HP Productivity Photo Gloss paper
• Final printed size up to 42 in high by 60 in wide
• A 60 inch paper cutter is available for trimming prints

Supported Applications

Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft PowerPoint, Adobe Acrobat (pdf)

Pricing and Payment

The price to print on Heavyweight Coated Paper is $2 a square foot. For example, 42 in high x 48 in wide poster is $28. Printing on Photo Gloss paper is $4 a square foot.

With our Print-It-Yourself Workstation, you provide a chargable PTA for your poster printing (and expiration date). You can then print at your leisure, and the account will be charged automatically at the end of the month. Alternately, we accept payment via an SU-13 form (PTA account number and authorized signature required).

Poster Templates

Poster Templates are available for Adobe Illustrator CS2, Adobe Illustrator 10 and PowerPoint. To download the templates, right-click on the link and select Save As.

Poster Design Tips

The print server is a Windows PC, so Mac users MUST take care to make their files portable.

Fonts and Text

Body Text of 36 pt is recommended. Text should not be smaller than 24 pt for viewing from a comfortable distance. Recommended fonts are Times New Roman, Arial, Symbol and Wingdings. Courier is a recommended fixed-width font for sequence alignments, etc. For Greek Symbols, use of the Symbol font is recommended.

Copying and pasting TEXT ONLY from Word or a text editor is generally OK.

Use Text Boxes to lay out the text on your poster.

Images and Graphs

DO NOT COPY AND PASTE images or graphs into your poster. Always "Place" the image from a saved file in Illustrator, or "Insert > Picture > From File" in PowerPoint. Object linking and embedding differs significantly across applications and platforms, and causes a lot of problems.

Save images as EPS or TIF format before importing them into your presentation.

• No layers on placed images
• No clipping paths on placed images
• No compression on any files

The resolution of image files should be 200 dpi at the final printed size. You can check the image size and resolution in Photoshop using Image > Image Size.

CMYK is the recommended color scheme for the Clark Center Poster Printer. RGB images may not print true to the original color.

DO NOT Place compressed image files JPG, GIF, etc. into your presentation!!

Saving your File

Be sure the page size of your presentation is the Final Printed Size. Alternately, select a page size proportional to the final printed size, but no smaller than 50%. Use a Template as a starting point.

In general, save your poster in the native format of the application used to create it. Avoid conversions if possible.

Application-Specific Poster Tips

Adobe Illustrator

• See the General Poster Tips




• Text Boxes

  To create a text rectangle using a type tool:

  1. Select the type tool or the vertical type tool. The pointer changes to an I-beam within a dotted box.
  
  
  2. Drag diagonally to define the text rectangle. The text rectangle you create is unpainted (not filled or stroked). Text rectangles are not visible in Preview view or when printing, unless filled or stroked with color. (See Using the Color palette.) When you release the mouse button, the pointer reverts to an I-beam. (In Artwork view, a rectangle appears with an insertion point at the top left corner of the text rectangle.)
  
  
  3. Enter the type. The type wraps to fit inside the defined area.
  
  
  4. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) to begin a new paragraph.
  
  
  5. If you over-fill a text box, a small, red '+' sign appears at the lower right corner, to indicate the box should be re-sized.
  
  

• Placing Images and Graphs

  Any part of your presentation created in another program should always be saved as file format compatible to Illustrator (EPS, TIF or PDF files) and PLACED into your Illustrator document. DO NOT COPY/PASTE FROM ONE APPLICATION TO ANOTHER!!!!

  The exception to this rule is text from a word processing program or text editor. TEXT ONLY may be copy/pasted from the text document into a text box in your Illustrator file.

  To place a file into an Adobe Illustrator file, choose File > Place, select the file you want to place, and click Place.

• Saving Your File

  Prepare your document for printing. Clear any artwork or text that may be outside your document. Select View > Zoom Out until you can see your entire document. Choose Edit > Select All and delete any objects lying outside of your poster. Repeat until only what you want printed remains.

  Add a "Bounding Box". Draw a rectangle the same size as your document. Center this box over your document. Make sure it has no fill and no stroke - it will not print. (This maintains the poster's edge space.)

  Save your poster as Illustrator format for archiving and editing purposes.

  For printing on the plotter, SAVE YOUR POSTER AS Adobe PDF Format (File > Save As > Select Adobe PDF from the file type drop down menu, rename your file, click Save). Be sure to EMBED ALL FONTS into your pdf document.

PowerPoint

• See the General Poster Tips




• Scaling for Presentations larger than 56 inches.

  Use one of our templates, or choose a page size proportional to the final printed size. For a 60 in x 36 in poster, you can set the page size to 30 x 18 in, and print at 200% (double check that inserted images are at 200 dpi resolution at the final printed size). Another option is to use 56 in x 33.6 in, and scale to the 60 x 36 in page size when printing.

• Inserting Tables and Graphs from Microsoft Word or Excel

  
  

  To insert tables or graphs from Microsoft Excel or Word, select the object and copy, then switch to PowerPoint and Edit > Paste Special. Or, Insert > Insert Object, and click the appropriate application.

  To insert files from Non-Microsoft applications, use Save As or Export to create a PICT, TIF or EPS file, then Insert > Picture > From File into your PPT document.