Printing posters using Beckman Institute services

From a 7/28/06 note by Hank Kaczmarski to George Francis on printing effective posters using Beckman's printing services

This from ITG's web site as recommended by BISS (all made particular reference to the near perfect failure of PowerPoint-created or formatted posters to properly print) (maximum width is 59" by near-infinite length):

Poster Printing

Before beginning work on a poster to be printed on the wide format printer, please be aware that neither the ITG nor BISS recommends the use of Microsoft PowerPoint(r) for creating posters. Please review the Poster Printing ITG Forum as presented on the 14th of September 2004 for our recommendation:

Having reviewed the poster printing forum, it should be clear that PowerPoint is not the best choice for printing to the poster printer. That said, it may be too late - the poster may already be designed. To help this unfortunate situation, please read the following documentation.

The powerpoint to pdf guides (below) describe the procedure for converting a PowerPoint poster into a PDF document and offers some suggestions for how to do so without too severe of a loss of quality. (Do not design new posters using PowerPoint! Please read the ITG Forum notes above.) BISS recommends converting all PowerPoint documents - no matter the size - into PDF before printing. These instructions are applicable for any paper size, though the emphasis is on larger sizes.

Print Resolution Reduction Method (Recommended, Mac version coming soon)

Export Resize Method

Printing a poster from a PDF file

These instructions detail how to print a poster contained within a PDF file to the poster printer in the Beckman Institute. The document was written as a follow-on to the PowerPoint conversion process but is applicable to all PDF documents regardless of size.