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Creating a Poster using PowerPoint

Creating your Poster’s Layout

PowerPoint makes it fairly easy to start designing your poster. It helps to have an idea of your overall layout before you begin, so before you start creating your poster, be sure you have planned and designed everything first!

You will create your layout by using the slide layout options in PowerPoint or by creating the elements by placing text boxes and inserting images in the appropriate places for your design. That’s all there is to it. If you need help getting started, you can Contact Educational Technology or meet with a student digital media assistant.

Creating the correct size

Open a blank document.  

Select the Design tab.      

In the Design tab, click on Slide Size

From the drop-down menu, select the option Custom Slide Size (PC) or Page Setup (Mac). This will bring you into the Slide Size Dialogue.                      

In the Slide Size dialogue box, from the Slides sized for dropdown list, select “Custom.”                                                  

Enter the desired width/length of your poster (e.g 48 in wide and 36 in high). You may be asked if you want to scale up content when you increase the slide size. Choose to scale up. 

Click OK.

***Important: The roll of paper for the poster printer is 36 inches wide. This means that either the width or height of your poster can be no more than 36 inches with a margin. As long as either the width or height is 36 inches, the other dimension can be longer

The File menu in PPT with Save as and Save as Adobe PDF highlighted

Saving as PDF (Windows)

Save your document as a .pdf.

In the File menu hit “Save as” and select the file type as PDF, or you can automatically select “Save as Adobe PDF”. Then select your save location (i.e. On the Computer, in your OneDrive, etc)  

Saving as PDF (Mac)

Click the File menu. It will be located on your top bar, as seen in the image below:   

Select Export.

From the saving menu, click on the dropdown box. Select the “PDF” option.  

Select Export.

When you are ready to submit your poster

Submit the PDF you just created using the form found HERE.

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