Poster Printing Design Guidelines

These guidelines are a work in progress and are constantly being updated. Please let us know if you find some good tips or have a nice template we can post.

Important Note - Starting July 1, 2009

Starting July 1, 2009, posters submitted with less than 4 business day lead time will incur a cost/charge for additional labor to handle them. These rates are shown below for various submission times and are the result of additional staffing diverted from other jobs to handle late submissions.

• $10 for less than 4 full business days lead time
• $25 for less than 2 full business days lead time
• $50 for less than 1 full business day lead time

The business day is considered to be 9am-5pm, Monday - Friday. These are considered average costs to handle posters submitted after the 4 business day deadline. Typically posters are printed by BELS student staff as time permits; however posters submitted late require additional staffing which has not been paid for by the Dean. You can avoid this cost by submitting the poster with more than 4 business days lead time. We recommend that all posters be submitted electronically with 5 business days lead time.

Poster Printing Policy

• Posters are printed for Baskin School of Engineering (BSOE) faculty, staff and students by the Baskin Engineering Lab Support (BELS) Group on a time allowed basis.
• BSOE Faculty, staff and students do not currently pay a recharge for conforming to important guidelines (e.g. size and lead time), as costs are covered by the Dean of Engineering via the Instructional Computing Budget.
• Posters that do not conform to important guidelines listed may (at our discretion) not be printed by BELS. Posters larger than 48in in both dimensions incur a recharge to cover added expenses for larger size rolls.
• BELS asks for 5 business days to print a poster, as our student staff print on a time-available basis. When the need is more urgent please let us know ahead of time and we will do what we can. Note: For 2009-10 academic year, BELS has asked for permission to charge staff time on any poster submitted with less than 4 business days in advance of need. The charge is projected to be $10 for less than 4 business days lead time; $25 for less than 2 business days lead time and $50 for less than 1 business day lead time. This is still less than the cost of printing at Fedex Kinkos where a typical 4x3ft poster costs $95+tax ($7.75 per sq ft).
• Poster printing is operated by trained BELS and SOE Techstaff members only. Plotter supplies are very expensive as well as repairs to the plotter. Untrained personnel can easily damage the plotter and consume vast quantities of expensive photo paper and ink unnecessarily.
• All posters sent in for printing are assumed to have no copyright protection and may be displayed in any BSOE area.
• BSOE personnel may have their posters printed elsewhere, such as the alterate locations listed. However BSOE will not automatically cover poster printing costs for jobs sent elsewhere.

Poster Printing Procedures

1. Before designing your poster, please read over the Poster Design Guidelines and Tips below. This will save you time, effort and will assist you in making your poster more presentable. Posters that do not conform to important guidelines may (at our discretion) not be printed by BELS. You then have the option to submit a recharge job to UCSC Printing Services or other poster printers. BELS recommends that Microsoft Powerpoint be used and a size of 48in x 36in be used (orientation does not matter). We have also accepted pdf files. Our paper width is 36in, so one dimension should not be greater than 36in. Avoid using dark backgrounds as these (a) make the poster hard to read; (b) consume hugh amounts of ink and (c) can cause the paper to blister/boil.
2. Please name your poster file using the last name of the first author, subject and revision. This helps us identify the poster in our filestorage. Here is an example: Vitale-100TbNetworking-R3.ppt
3. Prior to sending your poster, print it on a laser printer (preferably color) and check to ensure all graphics and items display properly. Often screen displays and printouts do not match (beware of lying monitors).
4. To have a poster printed, please email the poster to . In subject line, put "Poster Printing - - ". Please allow 5 business days before a poster is needed. BELS staff will attempt to look over the poster for problems prior to printing.
5. All posters sent to BELS may be retained in our electronic files and additional copies later printed for display in the halls and rooms of the Baskin School of Engineering. We assume that all posters sent are allowed for general use by BSOE and that no copyrights apply. BELS does not guarantee that a record or backup copy will be maintained - so be sure you keep a copy.

Poster Design Guidelines

Note: Failure to follow IMPORTANT guidelines may result in your poster not being printed and subsequently returned to you for repair. This may result in delays in getting your poster printed. Failure to follow recommended guidelines may result in poor quality posters or delays in printing.

Software For Designing Posters: IMPORTANT

• File submission should be as a Microsoft Powerpoint or PDF file.

Recommendation

• Properly sized PDF or Microsoft Powerpoint file
• If Powerpoint, use a single slide, re-sized to your poster size.
• Standard Poster Size 36 inches by 48 inches
• Please use the Official Baskin School of Engineering Logo (E2 Windows). Use of Cyber Slug Logo should be limited to Computer Engineering and Computer Science students as the artist gift was to those programs.
• Image resolution should be 300dpi or a little higher at the final size of the image.

Powerpoint Setup Instructions & Tips

1. In Powerpoint, create a new blank presentation
2. Re-size the slide to match your desired poster size. File -> Page Setup;. Select slide size for: Custom and change the measurements to the size of your poster (example 48in x 36in). Once you have set these sizes, you can put images right up to the edge on your document.
3. When printing to a local laser printer and you want the entire slide, select the auto scale feature on your print driver dialog box.

Poster Size: IMPORTANT

• Standard size is 48in x 36in (either vertical or horizontal) One dimension must NOT be any larger than 36in. Our standard paper rolls are 36in wide.
• "Oversized" Option - both dimensions are larger than 36in (means we cannot use 36in wide roll) Should both dimensions of the poster be greater than 36in, a wider roll of paper is then required. Our printer can print up to 60in wide, however this service is not standard and will require reimbursement for costs.

Please provide BELS the recharge fopal and authorization to charge the funds source for the wider paper and the additional technical support time needed to setup the printer. We may not always have the wider paper, so be prepared to allow additional time for ordering larger than 36in wide paper. When we have a number of jobs in the queue, jobs requiring paper larger than 36in wide are sidelined until ALL standard jobs are finished. When changing printer paper types, we loose an amount of paper due to reloading and some time is needed to align paper and test system.

Oversized Poster Supplemental Costs

Size	Cost	Notes
##in x 60in	$7 + $2 per linear ft	$7 is setup costs, $2 is cost for supplies per linear foot
48in x 48in	$15	This is a size often requested

Image Resolution: VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU

Resolution refers to the number of colored dots or pixels that make up an image. It is commonly expressed in dpi or dots per inch.

Resolution Rules-of-thumb: 300 dpi at final image size

• The higher the dpi, the greater the resolution, the better the image quality. But don’t go overboard. Higher resolution images create larger file size.
• Image resolution is directly and inversely proportional to an image’s physical size. When you increase the resolution of an image, reduce its size. When you enlarge an image, lower the resolution. Otherwise, the image will print poorly.
• For printed images, the ideal resolution is 300 dpi for images and 400 dpi for text at the final printed size .

Resolution Details at: For details on what pixcel count for the size of image you have to achieve 300dpi, see the table at: http://www.largeformatposters.com/help-resolution.html

Fonts and Symbols: IMPORTANT

• Recommend use of standard fonts and/or symbols. Use of fonts or symbols not present on BELS computers may have an impact on how your poster prints.

Warning on Background Colors and Watermarks: IMPORTANT

Use a white background for your poster when possible. Avoid using background colors for the entire poster, small areas to highlight certain details are ok. If using a watermark, ensure it is very light and will not interfere with the information on your poster. Some people have used the CyberSlug in very light yellow.

Reasons to avoid using background colors

• Dark backgrounds make designing graphics a royal pain. To make your graphics work on a dark background you would need to either invert the figures so that they stand out against a dark background or you would need to frame your figures in white boxes.
• Large areas of background color result in lots of ink sprayed onto the paper. The additional ink can in some cases cause the paper to boil or blister.
• Unnecessary background colors use up lots of expensive ink. If we run out of ink, we may not complete your poster.
• Very infrequently, the ink jet printer can miss a small line of dark background when spraying ink. There are a variety of reasons, however the end result is very noticeable. You can avoid this problem and costly reruns by not having a background color.
• Printing large background areas takes longer for the job to finish. This can be a problem if you are in a hurry.

Tips and Other Suggestions

* Print a Proof of your poster.
Please provide a printed proof of your poster (usually 8.5” x 11” is fine, and color is preferred, but not required). To do this, make a copy of your final poster slide file and open it. Go back up to File > Page Setup and reselect “Slide sized for:”, changing “Custom” to “US Letter Paper”. Then print it. Bring this with you when you request poster printing.

* Copy your file to a CDROM or USB memory stick. You hand this to BELS to have the poster printed.

Other Tutorials and References

Here is a list of other sites that have provided tips on making scientific posters. These tips have been accumulated over a number of years by observing what posters are successful in presentations and what are not.

Cornell University http://cf.ccmr.cornell.edu/docs/instructions/printing/ScientificPosters.pdf

A great tutorial by Li Lynne Graves (Graphic Designer) on poster design for maximum impact. Should be mandatory reading prior to designing your poster. Poster examples both bad/good with their problems are shown. For simplity and to avoid common problems, BELS prefers the poster be constructed using powerpoint and to avoid using background colors. Use of other programs, such as Adobe Indesign or Illustrator, does not guarantee that BELS staff can view nor even print the poster. At present BELS does not have a copy of the Adobe products. Instead of background colors, set apart your graphics and text by using boxes and shadowing of the boxes.

* Swarthmore College http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/posteradvice.htm

* North Carolina State University http://www.ncsu.edu/project/posters/IndexStart.html

Templates

We are attempting to develop some templates for folks to start with. If you have one that would us to post, please send to us.

Posting Printing Alternatives

As our poster printing service is subsizided by the BSOE Dean, BELS does not print posters for individuals and groups not associated with BSOE. We suggest the following services be used.

UCSC Printing Services

http://printing.ucsc.edu/hpinstructions.html
for assistance with UCSC Printing Services Poster Printing contact
Bill Kasper 831-459-5273 email:

They are located in the basement of the Jack Baskin Engineering Building, almost directly below the coffee cart.
Printing services can also print on a wide variety of materials and will do lamination.

Microscopy Lab - Earth and Marine Sciences

http://microscopy.ucsc.edu/

Fed-Ex Kinko's Office Print Center - Downtown Santa Cruz

FedEx Kinko's Office Print Center
105 Laurel Street
(Corner of Laurel/Broadway and Front Street)
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
(831) 425-1177
Price - 3/1/09: $7.75 per square ft on bond paper; 3x4 poster = $93 + tax
24 hour advance notice required but sometimes they will waive.

Logos

Copyright Notes:
-- Baskin Engineering Graphics copyright UC Regents and UCSC Jack Baskin School of Engineering.
-- The "Cyber Slug" Logo (Banana Slug with Laptop) is copyright Mike Welles, graphic artist. Mr. Welles gave the Computer Engineering and Computer Information Sciences Boards an exclusive and perpetual license to use the logo. Personnel in departments other than Computer Engineering and Computer Science should refrain from use. History of the Cyber Slug can be found at: http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/about/cyber-slug

Posters printed for Baskin School of Engineering activities and for conferences should use the official Baskin Engineering graphics below. After July 2008 Academic Year, the 10th Year Anniversary Graphics should no longer be used and the standard 'E2 Windows' Baskin Engineering Logos used. The 'Cyber Slug' logo should only be used by posters in Computer Engineering and Computer Science programs. The Dean's Office has encouraged research posters in all departments to use the official Baskin Engineering graphic.

On Windows, right click image and save to your computer.

Attachment	Size
SOE_10_mark.eps	628.37 KB
SOE_10_mark.pdf	19.24 KB
SOE_Celebrating10.eps	630.42 KB
SOE_Celebrating10.pdf	48.49 KB
SOE_logo.eps	624.35 KB
SOE_logo.pdf	46.56 KB
SOE_logo_horiz.eps	610.98 KB
SOE_logo_horiz.pdf	14.14 KB
slug.eps	294.4 KB
slug.pdf	90.35 KB