An A2 poster from tiled A4 sheets
A2 is 420 by 594 mm, the size most noticeboard and shop-window posters use. With only an A4 printer you can still produce one: tile the artwork, print, and tape the sheets together.
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A2 is exactly four times the area of A4
Each step down the A series halves the long edge, so A2 equals two A3 sheets or four A4 sheets, and every size shares the same 1 to root-2 proportion. Two columns by two rows of A4 comes to precisely 420 by 594 mm. In practice, once you allow for a printer margin and a glue flap, the default settings produce around eight sheets. Set both margin and overlap to zero and use borderless printing if you insist on four.
How big the type needs to be
For an A2 poster read from two or three metres, headlines want to be 100 pt (about 35 mm) or larger and body text at least 24 pt (about 8 mm). Tiling enlarges whatever resolution the source has, so an image should be around 3500 pixels on the long edge to stay clean at A2. Text-only artwork is best supplied as a PDF, which stays sharp at any enlargement.
Check the 50 mm ruler before you glue anything
Page one carries a 50 mm ruler in the corner. If it does not measure exactly 50 mm, your print dialog scaled the job down. Assemble anyway and the shrinkage compounds across eight sheets: the finished poster ends up more than two centimetres short and the artwork steps out of line at every seam.
Frequently asked questions
How many A4 sheets is an A2 poster?
Four in theory, a 2 by 2 grid with no margin and no overlap. With the default 5 mm margin and 5 mm flap the tool uses landscape A4 in a 2 by 4 grid, which is eight. The sheet count is shown on screen as you change the settings.
Can I force it down to four sheets?
Yes, by setting both margin and overlap to zero. Without borderless printing, though, your printer will leave an unprinted band on all four edges and the artwork will not join up. On a printer that cannot go borderless, keep the eight sheets or switch the output to A3.
How is the assembly order marked?
Every page gets a label such as A-1, A-2 or B-1: the letter is the row and the number is the column. A-1 is the top left, A-2 sits to its right, and B-1 starts the next row down. Lay the sheets out in label order before you reach for the tape.