Large Format Poster Common Issues and Problems

Printing Appointments

It is very important to contact the Research & Design Studio staff early to reserve time for printing. Printing appointments are required. There is often much competition for resources (workstations, support staff, large format printers, etc) at the end of the semester and we want to ensure that everyone has access to the resources that they need to complete their assignments.

•  25% of students did not attend the workshop scheduled for their course.
•  20% of appointments are rescheduled, cancelled, or no shows.
•  20-25% of students are late or unprepared, causing appointments to run over 1-hr.

File Formats

We recommend that any images placed in the poster are JPEG, TIFF, PDF, GIF or PNG file formats to avoid printing and compatibility problems.

We have standardized on Microsoft PowerPoint as the layout tool for creating large format posters.  While it is possible to create the poster on a Windows computer we recommend that the poster is opened and checked on a Mac BEFORE the scheduled printing appointment to ensure there are no changes in color and formatting.  We DO NOT recommend that you create the poster using Open Office on a Linux computer.

We recommend that you avoid creating posters with Microsoft Office 2003 or 2004. If you do use Office 2003 or2004 to create your poster, it is likely there will be formatting and printing issues.  The newest versions of Office (2007 on Windows & 2008 on Mac) are available in all ITS computer labs on campus.

If you plan on using an application other than PowerPoint to create the poster it is important to speak with a MPC professional staff member ahead of time to avoid compatibility and printing problems.

Image Resolution

Because the posters are printed at such a large scale the quality of the image that is placed into the poster is important.  Often images that are grabbed from Google searches do not have a high enough resolution for print reproduction and can appear very pixelated and/or blurry when printed.  It is usually best to scan images from books, take digital photos or speak with a reference librarian about high-quality image databases.