Dimensions-Presentation Deck-Screen and Printable (Full Page)

[Union Bridge Capital]

Hello Adobe Support Community!

I am new. What are the best dimensions for creating a multi paged presentation deck that needs to be able to be displayed on a large HD TV and/or computer monitor screen, but also allows for printing (once converted to PDF) that takes up the whole page (standard 8.5x11 in.) in landscape view? I am not sure how to set the margins or bleeds. There will be no cutting/trimming of prints; I just need the ability to print full page as described above. I have tried the following:

W: 1920 px, H: 1080 px; margins: Top-100 px, Bottom-120 px, Inside & Outside-55 px (will not print full page and does not look nice when printed for handout).

ALSO

W: 12 in., H: 9 in.; margins: 0 all across (but this does not look as nice and doesn't seem like it would translate to a PP presentation, although it would print full page-does not seem ideal).

Any tips/advice you have, I would greatly appreciate!!

Thanks so much!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Don't work to pixels in InDesign, pretty much ever, unless you are doing web documents like banner ads (for which it's not a particularly good tool, anyway).

An HD TV or display is 16:9 ratio; letter size paper is 8.5:11, not even close. There is no way to have the same layout display edge to edge on an HD monitor and print full page on standard paper. The closest you can come, allowing for a 1/4 inch print margin, is 16:9 for display, then printed at 10.5 inches by 5.9 inches, leaving about 1.25 inch margins top and bottom on the print pages.

If you work to any reasonable scale and export to one PDF with 16:9 proportions for display and 10.5x5.9 inches for print, that's as close as you can get. You can do the two different outputs at export time from one layout.

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[Union Bridge Capital]

James, 

Makes sense. Thank you for the reply and all this helpful info.! I will give this a go! If you wouldn't mind giving me a few resources (courses even?) for learning InDesign/Illustrator? I would greatly appreciate it! 

Thanks again!

[Union Bridge Capital]

P.s. Would you recommend creating two different version then? One for TV/monitor screens and one for print?

Thanks!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

The advantage to that would be that you could optimize each for its purpose, never a bad thing. You could use bright shiny colors and even videos and sound in the video version, and more appropriate content and text sizes in the print version.

The disadvantage would be that you'd have to maintain two documents with the same information, which can lead to mistakes and duplication of work (including proofing and review) each time changes are made.

Completely up to your best judgment of your needs and situation.

A complicated but elegant solution might be this:

• Create the display version using a 16:9 layout.
• Place that INDD file in another with a letter-size layout, probably so that there are equal margins top and bottom and minimal ones left and right.
• Add a simple background design, logo, boilerplate text or whatever else might be more suitable in print to the top and bottom margins. A parent page could be used to add the same material to all pages.

With that, all changes to the display version will be reflected in the print version, and you can export the first to PDF for display, and print the second (through a PDF, if need be) for print/paper versions.

Many details; you'd have to consider the font and element sizes in the display version to get optimal results for both purposes. But if everything can be fairly large and clear, it would be a workable way to do a dual-format doc, without simply having large blank margins on the print one.

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[Union Bridge Capital]

Thank you! I really appreciate your detailed responses. Thanks again for your time and help in this matter!

[Mike Witherell]

If you design 16:9 ratio you get the correct shape for FHD television/monitor screens. Then, if you export to PDF, you simply allow Acrobat to scale to fit the page. As James said already, you cannot have one ratio of height to width fit the same way on another different height to width ratio without also having some extra margin. But it will print easily from a PDF thru Acrobat.

[Union Bridge Capital]

Thanks for the clarification, Mike! I appreciate it!

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Another approach is to keep all content within that 8.5:11 ratio within a 16:9 overall page, so that the display version has only background or decorative elements on the edges, while all the actual content and useful layout still print full-size on paper.

That is, if you lay out the page to be 16 inches by 9 inches, it will export in a PDF to a scale that will fill a standard HD screen. But if you restrict your content and important design elements to the center 11.8 inches of width (leaving a ~2 inch safety zone on each side), you can crop the PDF to print the full 8x10.5 inch printable area of a standard page. With careful design, no one will notice that the side areas of the display are "filler."

Depending on your content etc. it may also be more visually appealing to leave a ~4.25 inch safety zone at one side or the other of the layout, so that you crop one end to fit on paper.

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[Mike Witherell]

That is an interestingly possible solution that James describes. Maybe set the InDesign document bleed in such a way that it could have individual bleed dimensions that give a 16:9 ratio background, but otherwise the page would be 8.5 x 11. The bad news is the ratios are wildly different from each other and the bleed would end up equaling some 15.1111111 inches to get the 16:9 ratio that is correct to the 8.5 inches.

Too bad you aren't working with nearer ratio shapes.

This is pretty neat:

https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/math/ratios.php

Across time, I have come to realize that 8.5 x 11 is an ungainly, awkward width to height proportion. Thanks ancient traditional paper-making sheet sizes!

https://www.quora.com/How-did-8-5-x-11-inch-letter-size-paper-become-the-standard-in-America

[James Gifford—NitroPress]

Well, as 16:9 is pretty much the standard for displays and letter-size isn't going anywhere, it's not like the OP picked a couple of random proportions. Making them work together as simply as possible is a useful trick to have on hand.

Just to clarify my doc-in-doc method, here's a 16:9 doc (blue with pink border; set up at 16 x 9 inches for convenience) placed in an 8 x 10.5 inch frame (yellow with black border), on a letter-sized page with 0.25-inch margins:

The majority of the presentation can be contained on the 16:9 doc, and exported for displays; the yellow borders on the second doc can be decorative or contain associated material, or logos, or a presentation name, or the like. It's all self-sizing and -placing; the precise dimensions and complicated mathemathics are irrelevant.

Basically one document, two format/end productions.

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