Here are some basic guidelines for designing a poster. It is best to use a program that is designed for building posters when you create one for a presentation. Suggested applications are Adobe InDesign and Apple Pages; however the guidelines below are not just specific to  these application, but can be applied when designing a poster in any software package.

1. Create your poster to the actual size that you want it printed.
2. Leave at least a half inch margin around the entire poster where there are no graphics or text elements placed.
3. Stay away from using black or dark backgrounds unless you are printing to a Photo or Glossy paper.
4. Make your header (title) font at least 90 point unless your poster will be less than  24 inches or the title is extremely long. The title font should be the largest font on the poster.
5. Make subheads and column heads smaller than the header and no larger than half the size of the header.
6. Make the main body text within the poster smaller than the column heads.
7. Do not use a San Serif fonts (Arial, Helvetica, Impact, etc.) for your body text because large amounts of San Serif text are hard to read when printed. Use Serif  fonts (Times, Bookman, Century Schoolbook, etc.) for the body text. You may use Serif or San Serif fonts for your header, sub heads or column heads.
8. If you are wanting a border box around any of the text within the poster, do not apply it to the text field because this may cause formatting problems when printing. Instead use a rectangle drawing tool to draw a box and then group it to the text field.
9. If possible before printing, save another version of your poster where the text has been Converted to Outlines. Use this version when you are printing because it will eliminate any font issues.
10. If you have Imported or Placed images into your document, make sure to take those files with you when printing because they may not have been embedded into your document. Alternatively if you have specifically embedded the file or Copy/Pasted the file, it will be embedded into your document.

Here are some tips for preparing an InDesign created poster for print:

Before printing your layout, it is recommended that your document be “press” ready. Below are a couple of steps that will help reduce problems when printing, especially if you are having your document printed by a professional printer or even on another computer system besides your own.

• Convert fonts to Outlines (Type > Create Outlines) and save this document as a separate  file for printing. Not everyone has the same set of fonts on their computer, so this helps to avoid the potential problem of missing fonts. Text in this version of the document will no longer be editable, but you can always refer back to your original version for changes.
• Embed all images (Window > Links then select your image(s) in the list and open the Options menu; choose Embed) in your document when you save your document for printing (as above). By default, when you place a graphic image in InDesign, the image is only associated with your layout through an external link. By embedding the images in your InDesign document, you can assure that these image will print properly from another computer. Note: this will increase the overall size of your file.