Print Academic Posters on Foldable Fabric #

I've been printing and presenting fabric academic posters with Spoonflower for a few years, and I really like it! These fabrics are foldable, making it easy to travel with them (simply throw them in my backpack) without the hassle of carrying a poster tube. The quality of the fabric is excellent, with high resolution and reusability. For example, I have used one poster for more than three events. 😄

Below is a picture of the WebSHAP poster first presented at The Web Conference 2023. This note shows the simple steps to print these posters from Spoonflower.

Step 1: Export Your Poster to a JPEG #

1. Export your poster from your design software (e.g., PowerPoint, Affinity Designer) to a single JPEG file.
2. Refer to this guide for instructions on exporting JPEG from PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Photoshop.
3. Export the JPEG with 150 DPI (dots per inch).
   1. I always print my poster using A0 size (vertical or horizontal), which has a size of 33.1 x 46.8 inches. Therefore, I just set the poster to be 4965 x 7020 pixels in the design software ($33.1\times 150=4965$).
4. Export your poster with the s-RGB color profile. It is usually the default option.

Best practices #

1. Use high-contrast colors in your poster, especially when using dark colors on top of each other (e.g., gray on black).
2. Be careful with highly saturated dark colors (e.g., dark bright blue), as they may appear differently on the fabric.
3. If you use a light background in the poster, make sure it is true white (#FFFFFF) or totally transparent. Spoonflower will exclude these areas instead of printing them with white ink.

More resources #

1. How Can I Make Sure My Design is the Color I Want?
2. Designing on Spoonflower? Don’t Miss These 5 Tips
3. Learn about Image Resolution and DPI
4. Saving Image Files as sRGB
5. 150 DPI: The Best Resolution for Spoonflower
6. Tutorial: Creating a Fabric Presentation Poster from a PDF

Step 2: Upload the JPEG to Spoonflower #

You can upload your poster JEPG to Spoonflower with [My profile] → [Design library] → [Add Design].

Then, you can configure your poster using the settings below.

1. If your poster is vertical, rotate it left/right 90° before uploading
2. Choose Center for Repeat
3. Choose Performance Piqué for Fabric
4. Keep the 1 Yard option in Choose a Size & Amount
5. Make sure you can see your whole poster in the left preview. Your printed poster will look exactly like this including the white paddings.

More resources #

1. How To Design a Fabric Research Poster with PowerPoint

Step 3: Present Your Poster #

1. To travel with your poster, simply fold it and put it in your backpack. There will be almost no creases after unfolding.
2. If your poster is A0 size, there will be white padding around it. You can use a scissor to cut it out (see the WebSHAP poster) or use clips to fold it backward (see the NOVA poster). I recommend directly cutting it out directly.
3. Use plenty of pins to hang your poster to prevent it from becoming saggy (especially for horizontal posters).

Final Result #

Here are more photos of fabric posters printed from Spoonflower. Really appreciate Tamara Munzner for the pictures!!

NOVA	NeuroMapper
Argo Scholar	WebSHAP