Translations:AY Honors/Lettering & Poster Making/Answer Key/30/en

Margins

Margins will vary for different styles and shapes of posters, but there is a way to lay out an standard portrait page that can be helpful.
This involves 3 steps.

1. Side margins are calculated at 1/8th of the page width. You can multiply by .125 (12.5%) to find this number. For my example, I'm going to use A4 (210mm X 297mm) paper, This size is close enough to 8.5" X 11" to be considered the same, for this example. Since the page is 21cm wide, we can find the side margins are 2.6cm. We can round this down to 2.5cm for easy calculating. For the 8.5" calculation, we can simply round the page to 8" wide, and calculate 1/8th of that as 1".
2. The top margin is then calculated at 80% of the side margins. For the metric folks, 80% of 2.5cm = 2cm. For the imperial measure, .8" is pretty close to .75" so 3/4 of an inch would be good to use.
3. The bottom margin is simply twice the top. 4cm or 1.5 inches.
   
   

On the left is the standard margins as calculated above. On the right is a page where all four sides are equal. This creates the illusion that that he text appears to be lower than center on the page.

Non-standard paper sizes

If you have a page wider than it is tall, it is best to leave more margin on the sides than the top and bottom.


If your page is tall and narrow, better to leave more margin at the top and bottom.