PowerPoint Poster Design Tips: Basics

-New blank presentation

-New blank slide

-Under Design tab, click slide size, and change to desired dimensions (typically 36”h X ” 48″w)

-Format background if you want a fill color or image. Avoid Gradient, doesn’t print well. Use swatches or eyedropper if you have a color in your poster already that you want to match.

-If you insert your own image, it will need to be very high resolution to look good as it’s being printed 4 ft wide.

-Under view tab, turn on ruler, gridlines, and guides to help you align things. Grid – each gridline is one inch. Give yourself some space on the sides and top and bottom as some might get cut off when your poster is trimmed.

-Under Insert tab, draw a table to create 3 columns. You won’t be typing in this table but drawing text boxes on top of it. You would then delete the table at the end.

-Draw a text box and fill it with white. If you need to resize, drag using the corner – if you use just the top or bottom it will try to keep the original proportions and snap back. OR, go to Format tab and change the Height and Width. You can be more precise here.

-If you just want a white rectangle say, behind an image, you don’t need to draw a text box. And you wouldn’t want to as you might accidentally type inside it. Instead, Go to Insert tab and Shapes.

-Go to Insert tab and charts. Insert a couple sample charts. How do we make sure these are the same size? How can we align them?

-Insert an image. Will this look good when printed? Zoom to 100%.

-Insert 2 charts. Format tab. Arrange>Align>Align center.

-When done, delete table, turn off grids and guides. If your rectangle shape has an outline, turn that off in Format.

-Save as PDF (File > Save As > change “Save as Type” to *.PDF