Tips for producing poster in PowerPoint

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Skills@Cumbria SDM Jan2021

These instructions have been written for PowerPoint 2016, but should work for

PowerPoint Office365 and PowerPoint 2019.

Check the rules

When creating and academic or conference poster, there will usually be some

guidelines that need to be followed. Failure to follow the rules can result in a

lower grade or a rejected poster. These may include:

 Poster size

 Orientation (landscape / portrait)

 Text sizes

 Other



Paper sizes

We should all be familiar with A4 as a

standard paper size. Doubling a sheet of A4

along, its long edge, gives us the A3 size.

Doubling A3 along the long edge gives us

A2.

Doubling A2 along the long edge gives us

A1.

Doubling A1 along the long edge gives us

A0.

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Skills@Cumbria SDM Jan2021

The actual dimensions are:

Portrait

A4 – 210mm x 297mm

A3 – 297mm x 420mm

A2 – 420mm x 594mm

A1 – 594mm x 841mm

A0 – 841mm x 1189mm

Landscape

A4 – 297mm x 210mm

A3 – 297mm x 420mm

A2 – 420mm x 594mm

A1 – 594mm x 841mm

A0 – 841mm x 1189mm

Create your paper size in PowerPoint

Open PowerPoint and you

will be presented with the

“Choose a template”

window.

You can choose any design

you like, but for the

purposes of making an

academic poster – you

probably want to start with

a blank sheet of paper

rather than having to work

around objects that

PowerPoint has placed on

the page.

Portrait

Landscape

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Skills@Cumbria SDM Jan2021

Next you need to select the Design tab at

the top of the screen:

Whilst in the Design tab, choose Slide Size and

Custom Slide Size…

This will allow us to input the correct size for our

poster.

The Slide Size popup window provides the options for

setting your page size.

Select Custom in “Slides sized for:”

You can declare Portrait or

Landscape.

Add in the page Width and

Height for your paper size (the

sizes are in cm so 594mm

becomes 59.4cm).

Clicking OK will resize your

new blank slide to your chosen

page size.

In this example, I have set the dimensions to create a page that is A1 Portrait.

Filling your poster

You are now ready to start working on your poster. But… you have a few other

things to consider:

Text size

You will need to set the size of your text so that it can be easily read from a

short distance. Our suggestions provide a range that you should try to work

within:

Main page heading - 54 to 70

Page text - 18 to 22

Page sub-heading - 36 to 48

Captions - 14 to 18

Section heading - 24 to 32

Image citation - 12 to 14

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Skills@Cumbria SDM Jan2021

Font

You need to use a clear font and may use separate ones for your headings and

text. Comic Sans and SCRIPT fonts are out.

Any common sans-serif (the ones without extra curls at the end) are generally

good.

Arial, Verdana, Calibri, Open Sans, Tahoma and Trebuchet are all good and are

easy to read on a poster.

Some simple rules

1. Follow the rules! Read the briefing document / assignment specification

to properly understand what you are being asked to produce.

2. Switch off your computer! When planning a poster, start with pen and

paper. Sketch out what you plan to do before trying to build it on your PC.

3. Use the right tools! PowerPoint and Publisher make usable posters, but

consider more professional tools if posters are to be a big part of your

future.

4. Be bold, but silent! Less text usually means more visitors – can you get

across your main ideas with charts and images? Can you show a journey?

5. Big and clear! Choose your font(s) and text sizes according to the

guidelines on the previous page. Ensure your poster can be easily read.

6. Use colours wisely! 2 or 3 main colours are enough to create interest

and style. Any more and things get distracting.

7. Line it up! Keep things tidy and line things up – you don’t want your

poster to look like the content was simply thrown at the page.

8. “White” space is your friend! Leave space around the edges and

around objects to make reading easier (the space doesn’t need to be

white).

9. Leave plenty of time for printing.

Poster presentations - useful links

Colin Purrington has compiled a very useful page full of tips, dos & don'ts,

templates and advice for designing, creating and populating academic

posters: Creating Conference Posters

For further help in using PowerPoint and Publisher go to Free Microsoft Tutorials

at GCFGlobal or complete a certificated course in Linkedin Learning (university