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Four sizes, and the only question that matters is how far away it is read from. Type sized for a desk disappears at ten feet, and an image that looks sharp on screen can be well under what it needs at full scale. Filter by the distance the poster has to work at.
Commands the wall. It should dominate the space.
Read across a room, storefront windows and retail.
Read from a few feet: noticeboards, in-store, event promotion.
Your dimensions. The space does not match a standard.
Work backwards from where it hangs. An 11 x 17 is read by someone already standing at the board or the window. It fits standard frames and ships flat, which is why it is the one you can distribute in quantity. An 18 x 24 is the threshold where a poster starts working on people who were not already looking, which makes it the storefront size. A 24 x 36 dominates a room, and is the largest poster that still fits off-the-shelf frames and an ordinary shipping tube.
Resolution is where posters go wrong, and it is entirely avoidable. A file that prints beautifully at 11 x 17 will often not survive being scaled to 24 x 36. The enlargement is what exposes it, not the printing. Send artwork early and we will tell you whether it holds at the finished size. The other common regret is gloss in a sunlit window: it throws glare from exactly the angle people approach, so matte is usually the right call for glass.
