Math and CS Poster Printing
The department has a printer capable of printing posters up to 36" wide on one axis.
Use of this printer is reserved for use by the mathematics and computer-science departments for materials related to their educational and research programs. Other users can have posters printed by the engineering department, the Copy Center at the Libraries of the Claremont Colleges, Pomona College's Duplicating Services, or by a commercial vendor.
Good Posters
Before you start, please read about creating good posters, which will give you some insight into what we're expecting (and what will make the lives of the people doing the printing easier) as well as some links to other good resources. Using our templates will help you with most of the tricky bits.
If you can only stand to hear one piece of advice, it should be
Start early. Get your poster in to be printed as soon as you can.
It takes between 30 and 45 minutes just to print a poster, so turning it at 4:45 PM the day before you need it is not going to make us happy. It's also not going to give you any room to fix problems if the poster doesn't print the way you expected it.
The Template Files
The following template files can be used to create posters for math and computer science Clinic and thesis projects. We highly recommend the use of the LaTeX document class and template file, as this method creates posters that print very reliably.
We also support the use of Microsoft's PowerPoint or Apple's
Keynote for designing posters. Other applications that can read
ppt or PDF files may also work, but there are no
guarantees.
Note that creating a poster using a screen-oriented application such as PowerPoint or Keynote may result in color shifts when printed on our CMYK-based printer.
- PowerPoint template file,
poster-template.ppt(244 kB)
LaTeX Class
For fans of LaTeX, we also have a LaTeX poster class that you can use.
Using the Templates
You'll probably want to create a directory to keep your poster work separate from the rest of your Clinic work.
Download the template or templates that you want to use by right-clicking on the appropriate link(s). “Choose Save link as ...” from the pop-up menu that should appear, and choose the destination directory for the file.
If you want to change the name of the template, you can do so in the dialog or later. You may also want to create a copy the template file so you have a blank version available in case you want to start again from scratch.
Harvey Mudd College Logo Images
Harvey Mudd College
The Harvey Mudd College logo images included with some of the templates may be “blurry” when printed because they're relatively low-resolution bitmaps.
There are black and white EPS files and color PDF and TIFF versions of these images available:
The official logo is the text block with “Harvey Mudd” in large letters and “College” beneath in a colored rectangle. The font, if you're trying to match it, is Adobe Caslon, but most documents produced at Mudd actually use Adobe Garamond as their body typeface.
Note that the college's seal (the oval with the earth, sun, and dividers) is no longer available from this site. The seal should only be used on official college documents. The seal should not be used on posters.
Corporate Logos
If you don't already have a high-resolution logo for your project's sponsoring company, check with DruAnn Thomas or Claire Connelly.
If we don't have an appropriate logo, you can ask your sponsor for one. Ideally, you want the logo in a vector format such as PostScript, Encapsulated PostScript, or PDF, or as a high-resolution bitmap (600 dpi minimum).
Rolling Your Own
If you're doing a poster for something other than Clinic, you can roll your own layout. (You may be able to do your own design for Clinic, too, but you should check with your advisor and the Clinic director first.)
Page Size and Applications
Keep in mind that the rolls of paper our DesignJet uses are a maximum of 36" wide. Theoretically you could print a 36" x 300' poster, but practically speaking your page-layout software is going to limit the size of your poster.
The following table shows the maximum page size for some common applications.
| Application | Height | Width |
|---|---|---|
| Adobe Photoshop | 40 | ? |
| Adobe Illustrator | 227 | 227 |
| Microsoft PowerPoint | 56 | 56 |
| Adobe PageMaker | 42 | 42 |
| Macromedia Freehand | 224 | 224 |
| OmniGroup OmniGraffle | xxx | xxx |
Margins
Keep in mind that the printer can't print all the way to the edge of the paper. (It can't do a “full bleed”.) You should leave margins of at least 0.5" on each side of your content.
Color Model
Be sure to specify the CMYK color model (which is the default in applications such as Illustrator and PageMaker). The RGB color model (used in applications for producing artwork for on-screen display, such as Photoshop and PowerPoint) is slightly different, and your printed poster may suffer from color shifts when printed on the DesignJet, which uses CMYK internally (and physically!).
Resolution
The DesignJet prints at 1200 DPI in black, and 600 DPI for color. Keep that in mind as you're designing your poster, and seriously consider sticking to black for your text.
Printing
The printer is idiosyncratic, at best, so printing is only done by the systems staff of the math or CS departments, but if you're curious about the details, you can read the instructions that Brooke Bassage-Glock put together.
Drivers and additional information about using the printer are available from Hewlett-Packard's support site. For Mac OS X, you probably only need the PPD file.
