\documentclass{article}
%This is an example of how you might lay out a conference poster with
% LaTex.

\usepackage{type1cm} %% Allows you to scale fonts to any size
\usepackage{graphicx} %% Lets you add postscript figures
\usepackage{pstricks} %% Provides coloured text, filled boxes etc
\usepackage{multicol} %% Provides multi-column typesetting
%%\usepackage{color} %% Non-pstricks colour
\usepackage{fancybox} 
%% This is how you set the paper size. Note how the paper size you
%% give is what LaTeX thinks it is using as it typesets. The final
%% output can be magnified to go on any size of paper e.g. if you
%% use a3paper, mag=707 your output is made 0.707 of its original size
%% so it actually fits on a4 paper
%% To expand A3 so the LONG side is 36 inches use mag=2174

%% To expand A3 so the SHORT side is 36 inches use mag=3075

%% To expand A2 so the LONG side is 36 inches use mag=1537
%% To expand A2 so the SHORT side is 36 inches use mag=2174


%% Margins are the one thing you can't do as a multiple of textwidth. 
%% remember to change them if you change paper size
\usepackage[dvips,a2paper,landscape,
    hmargin=1.9cm,tmargin=1.4cm,bmargin=2.0cm,mag=2174]{geometry} 

%% You can specify explicit paper sizes like this:
%\usepackage[dvips,papersize={300mm,350mm},%
%   margin=0.8cm]{geometry}

% This is just to turn off page numbers
\pagestyle{empty}

% Colours. We use pstricks for colours on the basis that we need it
% for some other things too.
\newcmykcolor{Inslate}{1.00 0.69 0.00 0.55} %Uncoated
\newrgbcolor{Inblue}{0.00 0.62745 1.00}
\newrgbcolor{Inpaleblue}{0.8 0.8 1.00}
\newrgbcolor{Inred}{1.00 0.0 0.36862}
\newcmykcolor{Inred}{0.00 0.84 0.63 0.00} %Uncoated
\newrgbcolor{Inthistle}{0.8471 0.0 1.0}
\newrgbcolor{Inball}{0.5568 1.0 .6078}
\newrgbcolor{Inbook}{1.0 0.85 0.56}
\newrgbcolor{Inbookedge}{1.0 0.66 0.26}

\begin{document}

%% Scale all fonts to sqrt(2) times normal size
\renewcommand{\tiny}{\fontsize{7.071}{8.485}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\scriptsize}{\fontsize{9.899}{11.88}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\footnotesize}{\fontsize{11.31}{13.58}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\small}{\fontsize{12.73}{15.27}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\normalsize}{\fontsize{14.14}{16.97}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\large}{\fontsize{16.97}{20.36}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Large}{\fontsize{20.36}{24.44}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\LARGE}{\fontsize{24.44}{29.33}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\huge}{\fontsize{29.33}{35.2}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Huge}{\fontsize{35.19}{42.22}\selectfont}
\normalsize

%  *** Begin code to draw border round poster ***
% Note that if you do all measurements as multiples of \textwidth and 
% \linewidth you won't have to change them when you decide on a
% different size of paper.
\psset{linewidth=0.003\textwidth}
% Sets up lengths for frame
\newlength{\frameleft}
\newlength{\frameright}
\newlength{\frametop}
\newlength{\framebottom}
\setlength{\frameright}{\textwidth}
\setlength{\framebottom}{-\textheight}
\setlength{\frameleft}{-1.0cm}
\addtolength{\frameright}{0.0cm}
\setlength{\frametop}{0.6cm}
\addtolength{\framebottom}{-0.3cm}
% Draws a frame
%% \psset{fillcolor=yellow,fillstyle=solid} %% works for psframe
\psframe[linecolor=Inslate,cornersize=absolute,linearc=1]
(\frameleft,\framebottom)(\frameright,\frametop)
%   *** Border finished *** 

%% To lay out little chunks of text, we use a minipage.
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\linewidth}
{ \Huge {\bf Making posters with \LaTeX}\\
A guide to doing things the simple way.}
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.4\linewidth}
Hugh C. Pumphrey \\ 
School of GeoSciences\\
The University of Edinburgh
\end{minipage}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.22\linewidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.22\linewidth]{eushield.ps}
\end{minipage}\vspace{0.01\textwidth}\\
\cornersize{0.1}

\hspace{0.05\textwidth}{\Inred\Ovalbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.35\textwidth}
{\Large \Inblue \LaTeX~can be a useful tool for producing conference 
posters, assuming that you like it already. I don't imagine that fans
of PowerPoint or Illustrator are going to take it up in droves. But
they don't usually care how beautifully their equations are
typeset. This poster explains how I have gone about typesetting
posters with \LaTeX~and is itself an example. I certainly don't claim
that it is the only way, or the best way of doing this.}
\end{minipage}}}\vspace{0.01\textwidth}\\
%% \psset{fillcolor=yellow,fillstyle=solid} %% doesnt work for shadowbox
{\Inblue \shadowbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.49\textwidth}
{ \Inred \section{Introduction}
\begin{multicols}{2}
Time was when people constructed conference posters by pinning
individual pages to the board provided. You were jolly sophisticated
if you used a coloured backing card for each page. The poster printer
has become a common item in large university departments and computing
centres and no self-respecting conference-goer nowadays wants to be seen
producing their poster with anything else. The poster printer is still
an expensive, temperamental and very slow device, however, often minded
by a technician who does not suffer fools gladly. The running costs
are high, too, at \pounds 10 per poster for plain paper and \pounds 30
for glossy. So everyone wants their poster to print right first time.

You can lay out a poster with a vector drawing package (anything from
the free and cheerful xfig to the nastily expensive Illustrator) or a
specialist layout package (free scribus, expensive Quark/InDesign).
You can even use Microsoft PowerPoint to do the job.  If you know and
love one of those packages it is probably your best bet. If, however,
you know and love \LaTeX~and you care deeply about how your
mathematics are typeset, you may want to use it to make posters. My
aim in this poster is to show you how it can be done, allowing you to
concentrate a lot on your material and a little on your layout and to
worry hardly at all about the undeniable vileness that
\LaTeX~sometimes seems to impose on you. To that end, this poster
requires nothing that does not come with an ordinary \emph{modern}
installation of \LaTeX and ghostscript.
\end{multicols} }
\end{minipage}
}}\vspace{-0.27\textwidth}

%% Scale all fonts to 1*normal size
\renewcommand{\tiny}{\fontsize{5}{6}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\scriptsize}{\fontsize{7}{8.4}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\footnotesize}{\fontsize{8}{9.6}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\small}{\fontsize{9}{10.8}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\normalsize}{\fontsize{10}{12}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\large}{\fontsize{12}{14.4}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Large}{\fontsize{14.4}{17.28}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\LARGE}{\fontsize{17.28}{20.74}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\huge}{\fontsize{20.74}{24.89}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Huge}{\fontsize{24.88}{29.86}\selectfont}
\normalsize

\hspace{0.5\textwidth}{\Inball \doublebox{\begin{minipage}{0.48\textwidth}
{\Inslate \section{Paper and font sizes}
\begin{multicols}{2}
Traditionally, \LaTeX~has been wedded to a small number of paper sizes
and fonts. For making posters we need better control over both of
these. In particular, we need to be able to use both the 36 inch or 48 inch
paper on the poster printer, but also to produce A4, A3 (or US letter)
size copies for handing out to interested parties. We may require
fonts in a wide variety of sizes, depending on how far from the poster
the audience are likely to be standing.
\subsection{Paper sizes}
To control these without giving yourself a headache, you need the
geometry package. The geometry package is your friend. Most \TeX\,
distributions provide it, along with a very helpful manual. (The
manual is likely to be somewhere like {\tt \small
/usr/share/doc/texmf/latex/geometry/geometry.pdf}) Make sure that you
have version 3 of the geometry package (which came with teTeX 2.0 or
later) and not version 2 or earlier (which came with teTeX
1.x). (Local note: This means you need to run \LaTeX~on a Solaris 9
machine).  The geometry package allows you to control both the paper size that
\LaTeX~thinks you want as it is setting the type and, quite
independently, the size that the final poster is produced at. For
example, you can say
\begin{verbatim}
\usepackage[dvips,a3paper,landscape,hmargin=1.2cm,tmargin=.8cm,
    bmargin=1.2cm,mag=707]{geometry} 
\end{verbatim}
and get your typesetting done for A3 paper, and then shrunk to A4 size
for output. If you set \verb+mag=3075+ instead, the poster will be
typeset exactly the same but will be scaled for 36 inch paper. This is
the only reliable way to get output for different sizes of paper. The
various post-processing programs that are supposed to re-size your
postscript file (such as {\tt poster} and {\tt psresize}) tend always
to do the wrong thing with \LaTeX + dvips output. I'm not sure what
stage of the process is at fault, but they are best avoided. 

You can specify quite arbitrary paper sizes and aspect ratios if you like:
\begin{verbatim}
\usepackage[dvips,papersize={300mm,350mm},margin=0.8cm]{geometry}
\end{verbatim}
Note that it is important to use the {\tt dvips} argument so that the
geometry package knows that the output will be processed by dvips.

\subsection{Font Sizes}
\LaTeX~has traditionally provided only a small selection of font
sizes: {\tiny tiny, }{\scriptsize scriptsize, }{\footnotesize
  footnotesize, }{\small small, }{\normalsize normalsize, }{\large
  large, }{\Large Large, }{\LARGE LARGE, }{\huge huge, and }{\Huge
  Huge.} By default, these correspond to 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14.4,
17.28, 20.74 and 24.88 point respectively.
 For an A4 document that's about all you would need. However
these may not match up to your requirements for your poster. You can
work around this to a certain extent by choosing a paper size that
fits with the available fonts for your purposes and then scaling the
whole result with the {\tt mag=} argument of the geometry
package. This is \emph{definitely} the best way to get the fonts the size you
want. If that isn't enough, you need to use the {\tt type1cm} package, which
allows you to scale \LaTeX's fonts to any size. For example
\verb+\fontsize{1cm}{1.4cm}\selectfont+ allows you to
use\\{\fontsize{1cm}{1.4cm}\selectfont letters that are 1\,cm tall
  with 1.4\,cm line spacing.}\\(Note that the line spacing value
doesn't have an affect in the above example. I think it only kicks in
at the start of a section. As a guide the second argument should be
1.2 times as big as the first.)  You can also use something like
{\small \begin{verbatim}
 \newcommand{\HUGE}{\fontsize{40}{45}\selectfont}
\end{verbatim}}
to define a new font size or 
{\small \begin{verbatim}
\renewcommand{\Large}{\fontsize{30}{35}\selectfont}
\end{verbatim}} 
to re-size one of the existing standard sizes. This poster was typeset
as if it were on an A2 sheet. This box is made with
the fonts at their default sizes, for the rest of the poster they are
scaled up by $\sqrt{2}$. There is a serious limitation to the business
of re-scaling the fonts as the small \LaTeX~fonts are \emph{not}
simply shrunk-down versions of the large ones --- they are wider so
that they are more readable at a small size. This means that
magnifying or shrinking the fonts by more than about 1.5 times is 
\emph{\Inred not} a good idea.

\end{multicols}
}
\end{minipage}}}\vspace{0.01\textwidth}\\
%\hspace{0.45\textwidth}\vspace{-0.5\textwidth}
\renewcommand{\tiny}{\fontsize{7.071}{8.485}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\scriptsize}{\fontsize{9.899}{11.88}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\footnotesize}{\fontsize{11.31}{13.58}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\small}{\fontsize{12.73}{15.27}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\normalsize}{\fontsize{14.14}{16.97}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\large}{\fontsize{16.97}{20.36}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Large}{\fontsize{20.36}{24.44}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\LARGE}{\fontsize{24.44}{29.33}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\huge}{\fontsize{29.33}{35.2}\selectfont}
\renewcommand{\Huge}{\fontsize{35.19}{42.22}\selectfont}
\normalsize
{\Inred \shadowbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.25\textwidth}
  {\Inslate 
\section{This example}
Here I have made extensive use of minipages to lay the text out in
an assortment of rectangles. 
(I also have a more formal example which uses multiple columns
to lay out the poster --- it is called {\tt exampleposter.tex}.)
To delimit the rectangles of material with boxes there are two
possibilities: the {\tt fancybox} package (used for this box) and the 
{\tt pstricks} package (used for the beige box to the right). 
We can set out one box of each type like this:
\begin{verbatim}
\hspace{0.08\textwidth}{\Inred \shadowbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.35\textwidth}
  {\Inblue Your text goes here}
\end{minipage}}}\vspace{0.1\textwidth}

\hspace{0.26\textwidth}\psframebox[linecolor=red,
fillcolor=yellow,fillstyle=solid]{
\begin{minipage}{0.23\textwidth}
Your other text goes here
\end{minipage}}
\end{verbatim}
The box will be automatically sized so that your contents, whatever
they are, fit inside it. That's the easy bit. The hard bit is
arranging your rectangles on the page. \LaTeX will not help you much
here. The commands that move your box about are the \verb+\hspace+ and 
\verb+\vspace+ and \LaTeX willfully ignores them unless they are
positioned as shown, with the horizontal positioning done just before the
box starts, and the vertical positioning done just after the previous 
box finishes. 
}
\end{minipage}}}\vspace{-0.3\textwidth}

\hspace{0.29\textwidth}{\black \shadowbox{
\begin{minipage}{0.17\textwidth}
  {\Inred 
\section{Figures}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\textwidth]{dull}\\
Postscript figures may be included with \verb+\includegraphics+ in the 
usual manner.
}
\end{minipage}}}\vspace{0.01\textwidth}

\hspace{0.26\textwidth}\psframebox[linecolor=Inred,
fillcolor=Inbook,fillstyle=solid]{
\begin{minipage}{0.22\textwidth}
This box is made by the pstricks command {\tt psframebox}. This
means that we can do extra magic with it, such as give it a coloured
background. There may be things that don't work: the main one I have
found is the {\tt verb} command and the {\tt begin\{verbatim\}} and
{\tt end\{verbatim\}} commands. (That is why there are no backslashes
in this box.) We can do inline maths like $x^2 + y^2=
z^2$. Equations like \[ y=\int_0^1 x^2 dx \] also seem to
work. Finally, you can include figures with {\tt includegraphics}
\end{minipage}
}\vspace{- 0.3\textwidth}

\hspace{0.51\textwidth}\psframebox[linecolor=Inred,
  cornersize=absolute,linearc=0.5, framesep=0.2cm,fillcolor=Inpaleblue,
fillstyle=solid]{
\begin{minipage}{0.44\textwidth}
{\Inslate 
\section{Printing it}
The result of typesetting this poster with {\tt latex myfile ; dvips
  myfile -o} should be a postscript file which is ready to go to an a4
postscript printer (or via ghostscript, to any other a4 printer).
Alter the {\tt mag=} argument and re-process to make a file printable
on a different size of paper. You can preview the poster with any
postscript previewer: I prefer {\tt gv}.

Whether your poster prints correctly will depend on the details of
your poster printer. I can only report on our own HP2500CP printer
(known as vc23 to University of Edinburgh folk). To print to this from
a Unix machine using the old BSD lpr/lpd
print system (e.g. {\tt ginger.geos.ed.ac.uk}) do:\\
%%\begin{verbatim}
{\tt lpr -Pvc23 -Ga0u -b myfile.ps}\\
%%\end{verbatim}
Unfortunately, machines running the newer CUPS printing system cannot
talk to vc23 yet. This printer has 5/8 inch non-printable margins down
the edge of the 36 inch paper. This poster should just fit inside
them. Your printer probably has such margins too and they may be even
wider.

One issue of concern is the orientation of your poster. If you use
{\tt mag=1537} so that the long edge is 36 inches long, the poster
comes out with its long edge across the roll. If, however, you use
{\tt mag=2174} so that the short side is 36 inches long, it still
comes out with the long edge across the roll. You therefore lose 40\%
of your poster. (I suspect that newer poster printers are less stupid
about fitting the poster onto the paper.) One possible fix for vc23 is
to forcibly rotate the PostScript file before you print it. One way to
do this is to convert to PDF and
back to postscript like this:\\
{\tt
  ps2pdf myfile.ps myfile.pdf \\
  pdftops -paperw 2602 -paperh 3679  myfile.pdf rotated.ps} \\
In the second command, paperw and paperh are width and height in
\emph{points}, that is, 1/72.27 inches --- this assumes that you have
mag=2174. There must be a better way to rotate the poster, however.

Although {\tt gv} is the nicest way to preview your poster as you
prepare it, it is not helpful for checking the orientation before
printing. This is because {\tt gv} seems to make an attempt to ensure
that it shows you the text horizontally. Instead, you need to use {\tt
  gs} directly:\\
{\tt gs -r10 myfile.ps}\\
(The {\tt -r10} option shrinks the preview to a sensible size.)  The
direction running across the roll of paper is horizontal on your
screen.  With the above examples, {\tt gs} shows {\tt myfile.ps} with
the text running horizontally and {\tt rotated.ps} with it running
vertically. In my experience, this means that {\tt rotated.ps} is
going to print correctly.

%%It ought to
%%be possible to print out the poster with the 36 inch either as the
%%long or the short side. There is the obvious possibility of getting it%%
%%wrong in the latter case and losing some of the poster off the side of%%
%%the roll.

%%First shot:  Poster made 36 inches LONG side. 
%%gv thinks long side is horizontal
%%lpr -Pvc23 -Ga0u -b mlsboxesposter.ps
%% Result: Long side across roll. RH edge trimmed slightly. Non-printing 
%% boundary is about 5/8 in wide. Also trimmed at bottom. How? 

%% Second shot. Typeset at A2 to improve fonts. gv still thinks long side 
%% is horizontal: will printer do the right thing or not? Margins increased
%% to cope with A2 paper, and also expanded a bit. They are 6mm on A4 
%% should be ~24mm on 36inch. Mag set to 2174 (not 2185)
%% lpr -Pvc23 -Ga0u -b mlsboxesposter.ps

}
\end{minipage}}
\end{document}