Presenting a poster at a Glasgow conference in 2027: the four-week checklist

Glasgow hosts a lot of academic and medical meetings, at the SEC and at the universities, and most of them have a poster session. This checklist is for anyone presenting at one in 2027, whether you are based here or flying in. It is written by the print studio on Washington Street that prints conference posters for the SEC and the Glasgow universities. If you only need the dimensions, our conference poster size guide has every size drawn to scale.

Four weeks before: read the author instructions

Find the poster board size and orientation before you open PowerPoint. Most UK and European meetings ask for A0 portrait, 841 x 1189mm. Many North American meetings use a 4 x 8 ft board and ask for 48 x 36 in landscape. A landscape poster on a portrait board hangs off the edge, so orientation matters more than the exact size. If the instructions only give a maximum, A0 portrait is the safe choice: a poster slightly smaller than the board looks deliberate, while one that is too big cannot be pinned.

Three weeks before: set up the file properly

In PowerPoint, go to Design, Slide Size, Custom Slide Size, and enter the final size, for A0 portrait 84.1cm wide by 118.9cm high. Do this first. Designing on a 16:9 slide and scaling it up later is the most common reason a poster comes out soft. Keep photos at 150dpi or better at the size they will print, and export charts as PDF or SVG so they stay sharp at any size.

Two weeks before: check it reads from two metres

People read a poster standing up, from a step or two back. At A0, aim for a title of 85 to 100pt, section headings of 40 to 50pt and body text no smaller than 24pt. At A1, multiply those by 0.7. A quick test: print the poster on one A4 sheet. If you can read the body text at arm's length, it will read at full size. Cut words before you cut the type size.

One week before: send the PDF

Export a PDF at the best quality setting with at least 10mm of space between your content and the edge, and send that rather than the PowerPoint file if you can. Printing an A0 or A1 poster in-house takes a couple of working days, so a week leaves room to fix a missing font or a blurry figure. We check every conference poster file before printing and fix common problems for free, such as fonts, low-resolution images and sizing, up to 15 minutes per file.

If the conference is in January 2027

Our studio is closed from Thursday 24 December 2026 to Monday 4 January 2027 and reopens on Tuesday 5 January at 9am. If your poster session is in the first half of January, send the file by mid-December, or plan for it to be printed in the first week back.

Flying in to Glasgow: skip the poster tube

Carrying an A0 tube through two airports is nobody's favourite part of a conference. Send the PDF before you travel and we will print it here and deliver it free to the SEC, your hotel reception or your conference booth. Every conference poster comes with 20 A4 handout copies for the session and a free tube for the trip home.

What it costs in Glasgow

A single conference poster on 170gsm silk is £50 at A0, £40 at A1 and £30 at A2, and two or more posters take £5 off each. That includes the file check, the 20 handouts, the tube and delivery to the SEC, your hotel or your booth. North American 36 x 48 in posters print in-house too and are priced on request. If the session is tomorrow, phone 0141 345 5841 before you send the file and we will tell you straight whether we can make it.