Should I break down an A1 poster in four A4 pages?

Thank you all for your swift replies, it's so helpful!

It might be practical to:

1. Design the poster as a double-sided large sheet (either A1 or A2, as winterm points out ). Put your poster on one side, leave the other side blank for the moment.

2. Design your 4 A4's in a separate document – as 4 pages at the correct size and orientation.

3. Place the pages from this document onto the blank side of the poster, as an imported image, so they are still hot-linked to the original document.

The advantage is that you can design the fold pages in a logical order and orientation. If you do this "in place" on the backside of the full poster, you will have to rotate the top two pages (or so I think – that can be inferred from your folding scheme, which is a "right angle fold" or "quarter fold") and so you'll have to keep on rotating your screen view to conveniently work.

When placed onto the backside of the poster, you can rotate the pages any way you like, and still work in the original document in a normal view.

I echo what Winterm states, have a word with your printer before you start (and ask them what kind of PDF etc they want)

Four A4 pages will make one A2 sheet. On A1 will fit 8 A4 pages.

A1 (Portrait): 594x841 mm

A2 (Portrait): 420x594 mm

A3 (Portrait): 297x420 mm

A4 (Portrait): 210x297 mm

Other than this feel free to design as you (and maybe your printer) will find convenient. Both ways are possible and acceptable.