 Even though printing your posters is the last thing you'll do, it actually takes a lot of preparation and planning to make it happen. If you've ever designed something for printing before, like a graphic or maybe something you've published, you'll know there's a lot of little things you have to pay attention to. In order to have the best printing experience at Western, it's really important to arrange time with the STC well in advance. It's important to have many weeks of advance notice in order to get a good time, and they're not able to do a walk-in with you if you forget. So make sure to handle that early on in your process as soon as you know when you're creating a research poster. If for some reason you were unable to schedule with the Student Technology Center, your next best bet is going to copy services. Unfortunately, in this case you do have to pay out of your own pocket. You don't have the same free print privileges that you would get with the STC, but they do have the best prices compared with places that aren't on campus. But if you plan ahead, you won't ever have to worry about it. In order to make your poster one that can be easily printed, you should use PowerPoint to create your poster design. You can use it on Mac or on PC. You should avoid using PowerPoint online because it's not as flexible and can't create the correct size document in order to be as large as you need it for a poster to be. You can also use the website Canva.com, which is really useful if you're using a Chromebook instead of a Mac or a PC. It has lots of useful features for designing for print. Your poster needs to be 30 inches by 40 inches, and you can change that setting in PowerPoint using the Design tab. It's okay if you use landscape or portrait orientation as long as it matches those dimensions. In Canva there's also an option to change the size, so make sure you do this first before you start your design. When you're nearing the end of the process, one of the best ways to be sure that you're ready to print is by seeing your design large somehow. There are tools you can use to do this, such as the Research and Writing Studio's Surface Hub tool that lets you see a large computer screen and it shows you almost the exact size of an actual poster. You can also use a classroom with a projector to project your design large onto the wall and see what it looks like again when it's large and what it would be like for people to walk by it. When you do this, you should check to make sure that nothing spills over the edge of the document. So if you think about the edges of your PowerPoint, sometimes you might accidentally cover those up with shapes or text boxes, and if you go too far it'll simply disappear when printed. So this is a really great way to double check. Because you can only print once, you want to be sure that you've fully proofread your poster before you go ahead and go to that printing appointment with the STC. To do this, you can proofread however you normally do, but also use some advanced strategies which help make your brain get into the right mode for noticing really tiny issues that you might not otherwise see. You can do this by zooming in really close so that your words and design look larger, much larger than they normally look on the screen. You can read backwards starting with the last sentence or the last piece of information and working your way up to take them out of context. You can read out loud which has a similar effect, helping you notice things you wouldn't see if you were just reading normally. And you can use this opportunity to make sure that the spacing and the contrast between all your elements is what it should be for readability. When you go to your printing appointment with the STC, you'll need to bring a USB drive that contains your PowerPoint and a PDF copy of your PowerPoint. The reason you need a PDF is because it ensures that every font that you use can be printed on the STC's printers, no matter what computer it's attached to. To create that PDF in PowerPoint, use the File, Export option, or in Canva just download the completed poster as a PDF file. One other thing to do before printing your poster is to make sure you've worked with other people on it. You can contact the studio for support with planning your research, writing the content for your poster, and also getting a second opinion before you print it all out. The Student Technology Center can support you if you're working on the visual design of your poster, or if you run into any difficulty with the software that you're using to make it happen. Both the studio and the STC are available in person and online, so it doesn't matter if you're close or at a distance, it's all going to be the same kind of support available to you. So be bold, collaborate, and showcase what you've accomplished.