Poster production Guidelines

The Audio Visual Centre offers a complete professional poster production service. We can design, print and laminate any type of poster up to A0 size.

In order for us to provide the highest possible quality, the following points should be remembered when preparing materials:

1 Posters can be designed and printed using the following programs: Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), all of which are available on NAL and Macollamh. Adobe PageMaker is especially recommended for its ease of use and compatability. We also print from QuarkXpress or Microsoft Powerpoint. We do not print from Microsoft Word or Publisher, Photoshop or any other graphics/paint program.

2 Many people prepare their own posters using Powerpoint. As PowerPoint is primarily a screen presentation program, it is not geared towards printing in a large format. Serious errors have been known to occur in reproduction e.g. important data being lost or shifting around, colours not printing properly or symbols/grapahs misprinting. Powerpoint uses an on-screen colour mode, RGB, whereas our in-house large-format plotter uses a four-colour (CMYK) process. This leads to colours printing differently from how they appear on your computer screen.

One way in which this can be avoided is to save your completed PowerPoint poster as a PDF file. PDF (Portable Document Format) can be opened on any computer which has Acrobat Reader. It preserves the exact layout and formatting of the poster.

PDF files are produced using the PDF Writer application. This is available free on NAL. When you install the application, it appears in your computer’s list of available printers; however, instead of producing a paper print, it converts your document into a PDF file which you can then save and print. There are various compression options available when making PDF files. Please ensure that these are unchecked when saving the file so as to preserve the quality of photographs and other images.

3 If you must prepare your poster in Powerpoint, the following points should be borne in mind:

We usually print posters to standard paper sizes: AO, A1, A2, A3. It is vital that you use the correct ratio of width to height in your initial design. A good starting point is A3 (43 cm x 29.7 cm), but you can use larger measurements if you like. We can easily enlarge your poster from A3 to the required size. The standard paper sizes that we print to are as follows:
A084 cm x 118.9 cm

A159.4 cm x 84.1 cm

A2 42 cm x 59.4 cm

A329.7 cm x 42 cm
We can also print non-standard sizes, depending on your requirements.

If using PowerPoint, you should design the poster on a single slide. Individual slides should not be pasted into this slide as they will not reproduce properly. Go to File/Page Setup/A4 paper. Insert the required measurements. It is not necessary Use text boxes and insert graphics where appropriate. A good idea is to divide your page into columns so as to give some order to the layout.

All graphs and tables should be copied from whatever program they were created in and pasted into a graphics program. They should then be saved as image files (jpeg, gif etc) and inserted into the poster using the insert/picture/from file commands. Alternatively, they can be pasted into Powerpoint using the "paste special" command. Images should be scaled up or down before importing them. Graphs created directly within Powerpoint or Excel are liable to break up and misprint, so this is best avoided.

It is vitally important that objects within a poster should not be grouped together. If there is a problem with one element within a group, it may be difficult or impossible to ungroup and isolate it. Grouping can also lead to unpredictable results during printing. Avoid grouping.

Unusual or fancy fonts should be avoided. They may look good on screen, but will not necessarily work in print. This can in turn have an impact on the appearance and impact of the poster. Substitution of fonts is time-consuming and can lead to reformatting of text. Stick to two or three well-known fonts at most e.g Times (not Times New Roman), Arial, Helvetica etc.
You must also supply us with the fonts you use on the same disk as your poster.

4. Text should be used sparingly. Too much text leaves less room for images/tables and can make the poster look cramped and unprofessional. Too little text can be equally glaring. If you find that your text doesn’t fit, maybe you should consider a different size of poster or a different layout.

5Try to be careful in your use of colour. Colours which are too bright or garish will detract from the overall impact of a poster. Pale, single-colour backgrounds are better. Blues (especially dark blues) are best avoided as they produce unpredictable results in printing.  standard background templates available in Powerpoint should not be used as they will not reproduce properly.

6One foolproof way to avoid potential problems is to save your poster as a PDF file. This file can then be opened on any computer using any platform and the formatting and content will remain exactly as you intended. You should ensure when creating a PDF file that compression options for graphics are not selected. Compression leads to poor quality reproduction. Please also make sure that you check the completed PDF for accuracy before sending it out. Are symbols and other elements showing up correctly? If not, the problem is in your original file.

Adobe Acrobat PDF Writer is available on NAL and Macollamh.

7Having your poster designed in-house with the AVC enables us to deliver top quality results. You simply supply us with text and images and we design the poster for you. The normal lead-in time for this service is seven working days. The sooner you talk to us, the sooner we can have the finished poster for you.
You will be required to approve the poster before we produce the final print.

8 Images of any type can be scanned in the Audio Visual Centre for use in a poster, be they photographs, negatives, transparencies or printed images. They can be scanned in any format or imported from your existing computer files. Should you wish to scan your own images, they need to be of a high resolution (at least 200 dpi) for proper print reproduction. Web images are not suitable, as they appear pixelated when magnified. This also happens with photographic backgrounds in Powerpoint.

9 The use of the web version of the UCD crest or college/departmental/company logos should be avoided at all costs, as they are not suitable for printing. You can obtain a high quality copy of the College crest from the Office of Public Affairs. If working in one of the UCD teaching hospitals, the hospital crest should be obtained from whatever office deals with printing/stationary.
Please provide crests and logos as vector graphic files.

10 Posters can be printed in standard sizes: A0, A1, A2, A3 or A4 or in any custom size, bearing in mind that our printer allows for a maximum width of approximately 34 inches (84 cm). A full matt or gloss-finish lamination service is also available.

11 An A4/A4 printout must accompany each print job so that we know exactly what it should look like when printed. If the cost of producing the poster is to be charged to an account, we must have all of the relevant account details (account name, account code and a Purchase Order number) before we can commence work on the poster.

12 It is important that you are contactable at all times in case design or technical issues arise or changes need to be made. Please supply a telephone number at which you or a colleague can be reached.

Cardboard carrying tubes are available for a small additional charge.

Should you need any further advice or technical assistance, please don’t hesitate to get in contact.

AVC phone number: 716 7020

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