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Presentations

14 Fonts That Make Your PowerPoint Presentations Stand Out

Presentation fonts, more generally known as typography , are one of the most neglected areas of presentation design .

That’s because when presentation fonts are used appropriately and correctly, they blend so well with the overall design that your audience doesn’t even notice it. Yet, when your font usage is lacking, this sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Over 30 million PowerPoint presentations are made daily. Therefore, when it comes to creating your own slide decks, you need to take every advantage you can get to make it stand out. Among other design choices, choosing the best fonts for presentations can provide a huge impact with minimal effort.

In fact, it’s one of the reasons why Steve Jobs was able to turn Apple into the brand it is today. His expertise in branding and design was fueled by the Calligraphy classes that he attended in his early years. This allowed him to find the best font family that accentuated his company’s brand and identity.

So no matter the subject of your PowerPoint presentation, the best font or font family will help you create a lasting impression and convey a powerful message. To help you shine through your next slideshow, here’s our cultivated list of the best fonts for presentations.

If you want to create a PowerPoint presentation but don’t have access to PowerPoint itself, you can use Piktochart’s presentation maker to create a presentation or slide deck and export it as a .ppt file.

Best Fonts for Presentations and PowerPoint

Before we proceed, you should know some basics of typography, especially the difference between Serif, Sans Serif, Script, and Decorative types of fonts. 

Serif Fonts

These are classic fonts recognizable by an additional foot (or tail) where each letter ends. Well-known Serif fonts include:

• Times New Roman
• Century 

Sans Serif Fonts

Differing from the Serif font style, Sans Serif fonts do not have a tail. The most popular Sans Serif font used in presentations is Arial, but other commonly employed renditions of Sans Serif typeface include:

• Century Gothic
• Lucida Sans

Script and Decorative Fonts

These are the fonts that emulate handwriting—not typed with a keyboard or typewriter. Script typefaces and decorative or custom fonts for PowerPoint vary immensely and can be created by a graphic designer to ensure these custom fonts are bespoke to your company/brand.

With these font fundamentals explained, you can also keep up-to-date with the popularity of such fonts using Google’s free font analytics tool here . Let’s now go ahead with our list of the best presentation fonts for your PowerPoint slides. 

• Libre-Baskerville

Keep in mind that you don’t have to stick with only a single font for your slides. You could choose two of the best fonts for your presentation, one for your headings and another for the copy in the body of the slides.

Without further ado, let’s dive into the 14 best presentation fonts.

1. Helvetica

Helvetica is a basic Sans Serif font with a loyal user base. Originally created in 1957 , Helvetica comes from the Latin word for ‘Switzerland’ where it was born. When you use Helvetica, the top-half part of the text is bigger than in other Sans Serif fonts. For this reason, letters and numbers have a balanced proportionality between the top and bottom segments. As a result, this standard font makes it easier to identify characters from a distance.

As a result of being one of the easiest typecases to read compared to different presentation fonts, Helvetica is great for communicating major points as titles and subheadings in a Microsoft PowerPoint presentation.

For these reasons, Helvetica is a popular choice for anyone creating posters .

If you are presenting live to a large group of people, Helvetica is your new go-to font! The classic Sans Serif font is tried and tested and ensures the legibility of your slide deck, even for the audience members sitting at the very back. Though it looks good in any form, you can make Helvetica shine even more in a bold font style or all caps. 

Futura is one of the popular Sans Serif fonts and is based on geometric shapes. Its features are based on uncomplicated shapes like circles, triangles, and rectangles. In other words , it mimics clean and precise proportions instead of replicating organic script or handwriting. Futura is a great default font for presentations because of its excellent readability, elegance, and lively personality. 

As one of many standard fonts designed to invoke a sense of efficiency and progress, Futura is best employed when you want to project a modern look and feel in your presentation. Futura is a versatile option ideal for use in both titles and body content, accounting for why it has remained immensely popular since 1927. 

3. Rockwell

The Rockwell font has strong yet warm characters that make it suitable for a variety of presentation types, regardless of whether it’s used in headings or the body text. However, best practice dictates that this standard font should be used in headers and subheadings based on its geometric style. Rockwell is a Geometric Slab Serif , otherwise known as a slab serif font alternative. It is formed almost completely of straight lines, flawless circles, and sharp angles. This Roman font features a tall x-height and even stroke width that provides its strong presence with a somewhat blocky feel.

Monoline and geometric, Rockwell is a beautiful font that can display any text in a way that looks impactful and important. Whether you want to set a mood or announce a critical update or event, you can’t go wrong with this robust font.

Verdana is easily a great choice as one of the top PowerPoint presentation fonts. Its tall lowercase letters and wide spaces contribute significantly towards boosting slide readability even when the text case or font size is small. That’s why Verdana is best for references, citations, footnotes, disclaimers, and so on. Additionally, it can also be used as a body font to extrapolate on slide headings to nail down your key points.

Besides that, it is one of the most widely available fonts, compatible with both Mac and Windows systems. This makes this modern Sans Serif font a safe bet for when you are not certain where and how will you be delivering your presentation. 

Raleway is a modern and lightweight Sans Serif font. Its italicized version has shoulders and bowls in some letters that are a bit off-centered. What this means is that the markings excluding the stem are intentionally lower or higher as compared to other fonts. 

This gives Raleway a slightly artistic look and feels without impacting its readability (and without falling into the custom or decorative fonts category). In fact, many professionals think the swashes and markings actually enhance the font’s readability and legibility. Moreover, Raleway also has a bold version which is heavily used in presentations and slide decks. 

The bottom line is that Raleway is a versatile typeface that can be used in a variety of presentations, either in the body copy or in titles and subheadings. When the titles are capitalized or formatted as bold, captivating your audience becomes a breeze. 

6. Montserrat

Montserrat is one of our favorite PowerPoint fonts for presentation titles and subheadings. The modern serif font is bold, professional, and visually appealing for when you want your headers and titles to really capture the audience’s attention.

Every time you move to the next slide, the viewers will see the headings and instantly understand its core message.  

Another major quality of the Montserrat font is its adaptability and versatility. Even a small change, such as switching up the weight, gives you an entirely different-looking typeface. So you get enough flexibility to be able to use the font in all types of PowerPoint presentations.

Montserrat pairs nicely with a wide range of other fonts. For example, using it with a thin Sans Serif in body paragraphs creates a beautiful contrast in your PowerPoint slides. For this reason, it is usually the first modern Serif font choice of those creating a business plan or marketing presentation in MS PowerPoint. 

Create powerful presentations with Piktochart

Piktochart is the easiest way to make powerful presentations. Import your own fonts.

Roboto is a simple sans-serif font that is a good fit for PowerPoint presentations in a wide range of industries. Well-designed and professional, Roboto works especially well when used for body text, making your paragraphs easy to read.

Roboto combines beautifully with several other fonts. When you’re using Roboto for body text, you can have headings and titles that use a script font such as Pacifico, a serif font such as Garamond, or a Sans Serif font such as Gill Sans. 

Bentham is a radiant serif font perfectly suited for headings and subtitles in your PowerPoint slides. It gives your presentation a traditional appearance, and its letter spacing makes your content really easy to read.

You can use this font in uppercase, lowercase, or title case, depending on how it blends with the rest of your slide. For best results, we recommend combining Bentham with a Sans Serif font in your body content. For example, you can use a font such as Open Sans or Futura for the rest of your slide content.

9. Libre-Baskerville

Libre-Baskerville is a free serif Google font. You can pair this classic font with several other fonts to make a PowerPoint presentation with a traditional design. 

One of its best features is that it works equally well in both headings and body copy. It’s clear and easily readable, no matter how you use it. And when used for headings, it works really well in uppercase form. 

Tahoma is one of the fonts that offer the best level of clarity for PowerPoint slides. It has easily distinguishable characters like Verdana, but with the exception of tight spacing to give a more formal appearance.

Designed particularly for screens, Tahoma looks readable on a variety of screen sizes and multiple devices. In fact, this significant aspect is what makes Tahoma stand out from other fonts in the Sans Serif family. 

11. Poppins

Poppins falls within the Sans Serif font category but is a different font of its own uniqueness. The solid vertical terminals make it look strong and authoritative. That’s why it’s great for catchy titles and subheadings, as well as for the body paragraphs. Poppins is a geometric typeface issued by Indian Type Foundry in 2014. It was released as open-source and is available in many font sizes for free on Google Fonts.

When you want something that feels casual and professional in equal measure, pick Poppins should be in the running for the best PowerPoint fonts. 

12. Gill Sans 

Gill Sans is another classic presentation font for when you’re looking to build rapport with your audience. Gill Sans is a friendly and warm Sans Serif font similar to Helvetica. At the same time, it looks strong and professional. 

It’s designed to be easy to read even when used in small sizes or viewed from afar. For this reason, it’s a superior match for headers, and one of the best PowerPoint fonts, especially when combined with body text using Times New Roman or Georgia (not to mention several other fonts you can pair it with for successful results). This is the right font for combing different fonts within a presentation.

13. Palatino

Palatino can be classified as one of the oldest fonts inspired by calligraphic works of the 1940s. This old-style serif typeface was designed by Hermann Zapf and originally released in 1948 by the Linotype foundry. It features smooth lines and spacious counters, giving it an air of elegance and class. 

Palatino was designed to be used for headlines in print media and advertising that need to be viewable from a distance. This attribute makes Palatino a great font suitable for today’s PowerPoint presentations.   

Palatino is also a viable choice for your presentation’s body text. It’s a little different from fonts typically used for body paragraphs. So it can make your presentation content stand out from those using conventional fonts. 

14. Georgia

Georgia typeface has a modern design that few fonts can match for its graceful look. It’s similar to Times New Roman but with slightly larger characters. Even in small font size, Georgia exudes a sense of friendliness; a sense of intimacy many would claim has been eroded from Times New Roman through its overuse. This versatile font was designed by Matthew Carter , who has successfully composed such a typeface family which incorporates high legibility with personality and charisma. Its strokes form Serif characters with ample spacing, making it easily readable even in small sizes and low-resolution screens. 

Another benefit of using this modern font is its enhanced visibility, even when it’s used in the background of your PowerPoint slides. Moreover, the tall lowercase letters contribute to a classic appearance great for any PowerPoint presentation.  

Final Step: Choosing Your Best Font for Presentations

Choosing the right PowerPoint fonts for your future presentations is more of a creative exercise than a scientific one. Unless you need to abide by strict branding guidelines and company policies, there are no rules for the ‘best font’ set in stone. Plus, presentation fonts depend entirely on the environment or audience it is intended for, the nature and format of the project, and the topic of your PowerPoint presentation. 

However, there are certain basic principles rooted in typography that can help you narrow down the evergrowing list of available PowerPoint presentation fonts and choose PowerPoint fonts that will resonate with and have a powerful impact on your target audience.

As discussed in this article, these include font factors such as compatibility with most systems, clarity from a distance, letter spacing, and so on. Luckily for you, our carefully researched and compiled list of best fonts for presentations above was created with these core fundamentals already in mind, saving you time and hassle.

As long as you adopt these best practices for standard fonts without overcomplicating your key message and takeaways, you’ll soon be on your way to designing a brilliant slide deck using a quality PowerPoint font or font family! From all of us here at Piktochart, good luck with your new and improved presentation slides that will surely shine!

Hitesh Sahni is an editor, consultant, and founder of http://smemark.com/ , an upscale content marketing studio helping brands accelerate growth with superior and scalable SEO, PPC, and copywriting services.

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The 33 Best Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

• BY Bogdan Sandu
• 7 February 2024

Picture this: You’ve crafted the most compelling PowerPoint, your content’s pure gold. But wait, does your font scream snooze fest or radiate confidence?  That’s where I step in .

Slide design  isn’t just about pretty visuals; it’s the fine print too. Think about it, the  legibility ,  typography , and  sans-serif charm  that could make or break your presentation. We’re diving into a world where  Arial  isn’t the alpha, and  Calibri  has companions.

By the end of this deep-dive, you’ll be armed with  examples of the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations . Fonts that won’t just hold your audience’s gaze but glue it to the screen.

From  PowerPoint font styles  to mastering the  visual hierarchy in slides , I’ve got your back. We’re talking  readability , professionalism, and those oh-so-subtle nuances of  typeface selection .

Ready to transform your text from  meh  to  magnificent ? Let’s turn that tide with typeface.

Top Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

Serif fonts.

Serif fonts are the old souls of typography. They’re classic, elegant, and have a touch of sophistication. Think of them like a fine wine – they just make everything look more refined.

Times New Roman

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1. Stick to Fairly Standard Fonts

One of the most fun parts of a design project is getting to sift through fonts and make selections that fit your project. When it comes to PowerPoint, that selection should be pretty limited.

To make the most of your presentation, stick to a standard font to ensure that your presentation will look the same everywhere – and on every computer – you present. If you don’t use a standard font, chances are when you pop the presentation in a new machine, you’ll end up with a jumbled mess of lettering. PowerPoint will try to replace all the fonts it does not recognize with something else.

This can cause readability concerns and even make the presentation look like it’s error-filled (with words that are in odd locations or even missing).

10 standard fonts to try:

2. Incorporate Plenty of Contrast

White and black text is easiest to read. But no type is readable without plenty of contrast between the background and text itself.

Regardless of what font you select, without adequate contrast, readability will be a concern. Opt for light type on a dark background or a light background with dark text.

Consider the environment here as well. Do you plan to show the presentation on a computer monitor or big presentation screen? How these conditions render can impact how much contrast your color choices actually have.

3. Use a Serif and a Sans Serif

Most presentations use two fonts.

• Header font for headlines on each slide.
• Copy or bullet font for supporting text.

You don’t have to use the same font in each location. It’s actually preferred to select two different fonts for these areas of the presentation. For even more impact pair two different fonts, such as a serif and sans serif, so that the font change creates an extra level of contrast and visual interest.

4. Avoid All Caps

When picking a font, stay away from fonts that only include capital letter sets. All caps in presentations have the same effect as all caps in an email. It feels like you are yelling at the audience.

All caps can also be difficult to read if there are more than a couple of words on the screen. Use all caps as sparingly as possible.

5. Stay Away From Scripts and Italics

While scripts, handwriting and novelty typefaces might be pretty, they are often difficult to read. Avoid them in PowerPoint presentations. (There’s usually not enough contrast or size to help them maintain readability from a distance.)

The same is true of italics. Anything you do to a font to add emphasis should make it easier to read. While italics can be a great option online or in print applications, presentations come with a different set of rules. The biggest contributing factor is that text often has to be read from a distance – think about audience members in the back of the room – and any slanting can make that more difficult.

6. Make It Big Enough

One of the biggest issues with fonts in slideshows is often size. How big should the text in a PowerPoint presentation be?

While a lot of that depends on the font you decide to use, there are some guidelines. (These sizes work wonderfully with the 10 fonts options in top No. 1. As well.)

• Minimum font size for main copy and bullets: 18 points
• Preferred font size for main copy and bullets: 24 points
• Preferred font size for headers or titles: 36 to 44 points

Make sure to think about the size of the screen and room as well when planning font sizes. With a smaller screen in a larger space, everything will look smaller than it is. The opposite is true of an oversized screen in a small room. Think Outside the Slide has a great font cheat sheets for a number of different screen sizes.

7. Turn Off Animations

Don’t let all those PowerPoint tricks suck you in. Moving text, zooming words, letters that fly in from the side of the screen – they are all difficult to read. And really distracting.

If you want to use an effect, “Appear” is acceptable. But there’s no need to dazzle the audience with crazy font tricks. All this really does is distract people from what you are really trying to say.

The same mantra that we use with all other design projects applies here as well – KISS or Keep It Simple, Stupid.

8. Plan for Sharing

While many users work with PowerPoint regularly, chances are that you’ll be asked to share your presentation slides for others. This includes posting with tools such as SlideShare, emailing the PowerPoint (or putting it in a drop folder) or sharing via Google Slides.

When it comes to fonts, Google Slides is the most complicating factor because it has a different suite of standard fonts than PC or Mac operating systems. Make sure to test the presentation in this environment if you plan to share and use a Google standard font or make sure to include the font you plan to use in the customization options.

9. Think About the Notes, Too

The part of PowerPoint presentations that is often neglected is the notes section. If you plan to distribute a presentation file to the audience (digitally or via printouts), the font selection for accompanying notes is important.

Use the same typeface as for the main slideshow with related corresponding headers and body and bulleted text. The big difference here is size. Body copy/bulleted information should fall in the range of 9 to 12 points and headers should be 18 to 20 points. This is a comfortable reading size for most documents. (These sizes also help ensure clear printing on standard office machines.)

10. Use Fonts Consistently

You don’t need a huge font library to create great PowerPoint presentations. Having a couple of go-to fonts that you use consistently is enough.

Make sure to use fonts consistently within a document as well. Create a PowerPoint template file so that when you use different levels of bulleting and headers, the sizes, color variations, and fonts change automatically. (Web designers, this is just like using H1 through H6 tags.)

A clear consistent use of fonts makes your presentation about how it looks and how easy (or tough) it may be to read and more about the content therein. (And that’s what it should be about.)

If you don’t feel comfortable making your own PowerPoint presentation template, you can download one to get started. These options might have a more refined look than some of the software defaults (and all of the examples in this article come from these collections).

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10 Best fonts to use in your next PowerPoint presentation

• Written by: Elly Hughes
• Categories: PowerPoint design
• Comments: 15

The design choices we make in our presentations – the colours, the icons, the photography and illustrations – all form a kind of shorthand through which our audiences recognise our brand and get a feel for the message we’re aiming to communicate. The same goes for the fonts we use. Fonts have as big an impact on design style as the visuals. Beautiful photography and well-designed icons can all be undermined by a poorly-chosen typeface. You need to use a font that aligns with the rest of your design style, and with the personality you’re trying to convey. You need a font with the right ‘voice.’

But how do we pick one? Before we get into our recommendations for 10 of the best presentation fonts, let’s run through some of the questions you can ask to help you decide.

Is it a Windows-standard font?

Before we get started this is probably the most important question to ask is if your font should be Windows-standard.

Free download: If you’re not sure what is Windows-standard and what isn’t, then  download this list of Windows-standard fonts for your reference.

We’ll have a look at custom fonts later in this article, but one last question to ask is if the font you intend to use is Windows-standard. Why does this matter? Well, if you make a beautiful presentation using a custom font and then send it to your colleague who doesn’t have the font installed, their version of the presentation will be a huge mess of mis-sized default fonts that isn’t really fit for purpose.

So, if you’re going to be using your presentation on multiple machines, you need something that will work on all of them – you need a Windows-standard font.

And, in case you were wondering, the ten we recommend here are all on that list.

Are you choosing a font for headings or body text?

The first thing to consider is where your text will be used – does it need to be easily readable in longer paragraphs and smaller sizes? Or can you afford to go bigger? Are you looking for a larger, more impactful slide title?

Whether your font is for heading or body text will help inform your answer to the next question…

Serif or sans serif?

Serif fonts have little ticks or ‘wings’ at the end of their lines, and are usually associated with serious, business-like, intellectual content, whereas sans serif fonts – like this one – have no marks on the ends of their lines, and are usually seen as modern, sleek and clean.

General wisdom is that serif fonts are better for print and for body text, as the serifs lead the eye from one character to the next like joined handwriting. Alternatively, sans serif fonts are better for titles and text displayed on a screen. But these are not hard and fast rules! A popular idea is to choose one of each, perhaps titles will be sans serif and body text will be serif, but it’s up to you – choose what feels right for your brand. Do you want to appeal to tradition, to intellectual weight with a serif font, or do you want your text to feel modern, to speak of technology and progress with a sans serif choice? Which leads to the final consideration…

How much familiarity do you want?

Many of the most popular typefaces already have well established voices. Everyone knows Times New Roman is serious, respectable, reliable. Everyone knows Arial is clear, no-nonsense, professional. If you want your audience to feel the familiarity of these tried and tested fonts, easily done! Or do you want to escape the familiar, be a little bit unique and memorable with a font your audience hasn’t already seen that day?

Once you have the answers to these questions, and have decided on the ‘voice’ you want to convey, you are finally ready to start searching for your font! Read on for our recommendations of 10 of the best fonts you can use for your next presentation.

10 best presentation fonts

1. garamond.

‘Garamond’ actually refers to a style of font, rather than one font in particular. Some examples you may have heard of include Adobe Garamond, Monotype Garamond and Garamond ITC. All of these fonts are slightly different, but all have their origins in the work of Claude Garamond, who designed the original punch cuts in the 1500s, making Garamond fonts some of the oldest around.

Prior to Claude Garamond’s work, fonts were designed to mimic the handwriting of scribes. Garamond’s typefaces however (there are 34 attributed to him), were designed in the Roman style, with the letters’ ascenders vertical and the crossbar of the letter ‘e’ horizontal, instead of slanted as in earlier calligraphic fonts. The letters were designed this way to increase legibility in print, which is what makes Garamond fonts such a great choice for body text. Such a great choice in fact, that the entire Harry Potter series is printed in Adobe Garamond. Outside of print, Garamond fonts have been used in the logos of numerous brands, including Rolex and Abercrombie and Fitch, and giants Google and Apple.

With their rich history and elegant readability, you can be confident that a Garamond font will bring a timeless sophistication to your slides, while keeping your text legible.

2. Palatino

Palatino was designed by Hermann Zapf in 1949. Based on the type styles of the Italian Renaissance, Palatino draws influence from calligraphy, and is in fact named after master calligrapher Giambattista Palatino – a contemporary of Claude Garamond. Zapf intended Palatino for use in headings, advertisements and printing. More specifically, it was designed to remain legible when printed on low quality paper, printed at small size or viewed at a distance.

Palatino Linotype is the version of the font included with Microsoft products, and has been altered slightly from the original for optimum display on screens. Book Antiqua, also a Microsoft default font, is very similar, almost impossible to tell from Palatino Linotype.

Both of these fonts are good choices for body text – a little unusual, they will set your slides apart in a sea of Arial and Times New Roman, while with their airy counters and smooth, calligraphic lines, maintaining elegance and readability.

Verdana was designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft in 1996, deliberately crafted for use on computer screens. The letters are widely spaced, with wide counters and tall lowercase letters, making this font extremely readable, especially when displayed at small sizes. Verdana is also nearly ubiquitous, it has been included with all versions of Windows and Office since its creation. One survey estimates it is available on 99.7% of Windows computers, and 98.05% of Macs. On the one hand, this makes it a very safe bet – you are almost guaranteed your presentation will appear as you intended on all devices, but on the other hand, you may not stand out from the crowd as much as you may like!

You can’t argue with its legibility though. Verdana is an excellent font to use for small text, for example, to keep your footnotes, references and disclaimers readable. Or, for a safer choice, Verdana’s unobtrusive, effortlessly legible characters will keep your audience’s attention on what you have said, not the font you’ve used to say it.

If you’ve used a Windows computer, used Skype, played on an Xbox 360 or just seen the Microsoft logo, you have seen a font from the Segoe family. Microsoft uses Segoe fonts for its logos and marketing materials, and Segoe UI has been the default operating system font since Windows Vista. This is all down to its beautiful simplicity, and on-screen legibility. Similarly to Verdana, Segoe fonts look perfect on screens and at small sizes, and are warm and inviting while maintaining the airy, aspirational feel of technology and progress. Unlike Verdana though – which has wide spaces and heavier letters – Segoe fonts are also a great choice for titles and headers.

Another fun bonus from the Segoe font family is the expansive set of symbols and icons it offers. From the insert tab in PowerPoint, click symbol, and change the symbol font to either Segoe UI Symbol, or Segoe UI Emoji, and marvel at the reams and reams of symbols to choose from. There are shapes, arrows, musical notes, mathematical notation, scientific notation, there are animals, buildings, food, Mahjong tiles, Fraktur letters, I Ching hexagrams… Likely any symbol you could possibly want is in there!

So for easy to read body text, light, elegant headers, or a quick and easy way to bring just about any icon you can think of into your presentation, the Segoe font family is a perfect choice.

5. Franklin Gothic

What is it that makes a font ‘gothic?’ There’s certainly nothing about Franklin Gothic that speaks of bats in belfries or doomed lovers wandering the Yorkshire moors! Well, confusingly, when describing fonts ‘Gothic’ can mean completely opposite things – it is sometimes used to refer to a Medieval-style, blackletter font, or conversely, it can be used as a synonym for the clean, geometric, sans serif fonts that began their rise to prominence in the early 19 th century. And that’s certainly the category Franklin Gothic fits into.

Designed by Morris Fuller for the American Type Founders in 1902 and named after the American printer and Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, Franklin Gothic is a classic American font that has been described as ‘square-jawed and strong-armed, yet soft-spoken.’ With its wide range of weights and widths, and interesting design details (take a look at the uppercase Q and lowercase g for some beautiful, unusual curves, and the uppercase A and M for subtly varying line weights), Franklin Gothic will look strong and approachable as your headings, and classy and legible as your body text.

Candara was designed by Gary Munch, and released with Windows Vista in 2008. It is part of a family of six Microsoft fonts, all beginning with the letter C (Calibri, Cambria, Consolas, Corbel and Constantia), that were all optimised for use with Microsoft’s ClearType rendering system.

The most interesting thing about Candara, and what makes it such a beautiful font to use, is the influence of architecture on its design. If you look closely at the letters’ ascenders, you will notice an entasis at their ends, which means there is a slight convex curve towards the ends of the lines – a feature best known from classical architecture. Columns built by ancient Greek, Roman, Incan, Aztec and Chinese empires were built with this convex curve, a particularly famous example being the columns of the Parthenon in Athens. Historians believe columns were built in this way to give an impression of greater strength, to correct for the visual illusion that very tall, straight columns appear to bow inwards as they rise.

And the architectural influence doesn’t end there, Candara’s diagonal lines – best seen in the capital X, N and A – have been designed with unusual ogee curves. Most often seen in Gothic arches from 13 th and 14 th century Britain, an ogee curve is part convex, part concave, forming a shallow S shape as it rises. Two ogee curves meeting in the middle form an arch that rises to a point – like Candara’s capital A.

These entases and ogee curves are what makes this font pleasingly unusual. At first glance, it is a standard, easy-to-read sans serif that looks crisp and clear on screen, but on closer inspection, Candara has some interesting design details that set it apart. Candara is perhaps not the most serious looking font, but if you’d like something slightly unusual, but still professional and perfectly legible, consider Candara.

Similarly to Garamond, Bodoni refers not to a single font, but to a family of typefaces inspired by the centuries old work of a master typographer. Giambattista Bodoni was an extremely successful master printer who lived and worked in the Italian city of Parma through the late 18 th and early 19 th century. Along with a French typographer named Firmin Didot, Bodoni was responsible for developing the ‘New Face’ style of lettering, characterised by extreme contrast between thick and razor thin lines.

You will have seen this in action if you have ever glanced at a fashion magazine. Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and Elle all print their names in a Bodoni font. In fact, these fonts are so prevalent in fashion graphic design that they have become a shorthand for the elegance and refinement the fashion world idealises.

The sharp lines and smooth curves of these fonts have been compared to the precise geometries of fabric patterns, and their delicate, graceful forms afford them a sophisticated femininity. This delicacy also make these fonts perfect for overlaying photographs. You will notice from the fashion magazine covers how the titles maintain their presence, but don’t overpower the photograph beneath. You can use this to great effect in your own designs; if you need to layer text over photographs, Bodoni fonts could be a stylish and sophisticated answer.

Best used in headings displayed at large sizes where contrasting line weights will have maximum impact, Bodoni fonts will instantly instil your design with an effortless, timeless elegance. Bodoni himself wrote that the beauty of type lies in “conformity without ambiguity, variety without dissonance, and equality and symmetry without confusion.” Bodoni fonts have all those things in abundance, and are some of the most beautiful fonts you can choose to use.

If Bodoni fonts are just that bit too extreme, try Bell MT instead. They have similar roots – both Bodoni and Bell fonts were influenced by the work of French typographer Fermin Didot, and have the same ‘New Face’ style contrast between thick and thin lines, just to a lesser extent with Bell fonts.

Designed in 1788 by the punch cutter Richard Austin, commissioned by the publisher John Bell, Bell fonts share similarities with Didot style fonts, but also with softer, rounder Roman fonts of the time such as Baskerville. The influence of flowing, cursive style fonts such as Baskerville can be seen in letters such as the uppercase Q and K, and the italic Y and z , which all have some beautiful, unusual curves. In fact, Bell MT is particularly attractive in italic, almost script-like while maintaining legibility. This makes it an excellent choice for sub-headings, as a softer counterpart to a sans serif heading. Or use it for quotes and testimonials, set in a beautiful Bell italic they will be inviting and authentic, as well as clear and readable.

Coming from an indigenous Salishan language, Tahoma is one of the original Native American names for Mount Rainier in the US state of Washington.

Tahoma the font however was designed by the British typographer Matthew Carter working for Microsoft, and was released with Windows 95. It is a very close cousin of Verdana, but though similar, Tahoma is a little narrower and more tightly spaced than Verdana, giving it a more slender, slightly more formal feel. It is another example of a font that was designed specifically for screen use, meaning it will look good at a wide range of sizes, and on a wide range of screens, perfect if you are making a presentation that will need to display properly on multiple devices.

In fact, perfect clarity is what sets Tahoma apart from some similar sans serif fonts. The image below shows the characters uppercase I (eye), lowercase l (ell) and number 1 (one) written in four popular sans serif fonts (from left to right) Century Gothic, Calibri, Gill Sans and Tahoma. Notice how in every font but Tahoma, at least two characters are indistinguishable. Gill Sans, for example, is a disaster here. It’s unlikely you’ll ever need to write these three characters in quick succession, but for scientific, technical or mathematical content, clear distinction between these characters can be very important – and Tahoma gives you that.

So with its easy to read, screen friendly design and readily distinguishable characters, Tahoma is an ideal choice for the slightly more formal, but still approachable, scientific or technical presentation.

Designed by Jeremy Tankard and released in 2005, like Candara Corbel was also designed to work well with Microsoft’s ClearType rendering system, meaning it is specifically designed to work well on screens. Tankard described his aim when designing Corbel as ‘to give an uncluttered and clean appearance on screen,’ and describes the font as ‘legible, clear, and functional at small sizes.’ All of these things are important boxes to tick when you’re looking for a presentation font!

Corbel is a little more serious than Candara, again in Tankard’s words: ‘functional but not bland,’ designed to be ‘less cuddly, more assertive.’ The dots above the i’s and j’s for example are square, not rounded. The tail of the uppercase Q is straight and horizontal, not a whimsical curve. This makes Corbel a good choice for more serious or technical content, it is legible and without excessive embellishment, yet not characterless or overused.

One of the most interesting design details with Corbel is the fact that with this font, numbers are lowercase. What does this mean? Take a look at the image below, where you can see a comparison of how the numbers 0-9 appear in Corbel with how they appear in another popular sans serif font, Segoe UI. Notice how the Corbel numbers don’t line up exactly? This is know as lowercase or old-style numerals.

The purpose of this is to improve how numbers look when they form part of body text – they are a more natural fit with lowercase lettering. Few fonts have this option (for a serif option offering lowercase numbers, consider Georgia, also a Windows standard font), meaning Corbel can make a for a very unique choice. It will be both legible and readable, and its unusual numbers will add a unique and pleasing design touch to your slides.

What about custom fonts?

Sometimes what we want is not the familiar, the comforting, the Arial and the Times New Roman, sometimes we just want something different . This is your opportunity to step into the almost infinite world of custom fonts. Here you can find fonts to fit almost any imaginable need. From timeless and elegant and crisp and futuristic, to ornate scripts and decorative novelties, there will be a custom font for you.

But a word of warning on non-system fonts – custom fonts can be a powerful, attractive component of your presentation design, but if used incorrectly, they can also be its undoing.

A custom font will only appear in your presentation if it is played on a device with that font installed . On any other device, PowerPoint will replace your beautiful, carefully planned custom font with one of the system defaults, and this can have disastrous consequences for your design.

If your presentation is going to be built and presented exclusively from the same device you shouldn’t have a problem, but if multiple devices or operating systems are involved, or if you intend to share your presentation for others to use, to ensure your fonts survive the jump it is safer to stay in the realms of the system default fonts. There you can be confident your carefully crafted designs will stay exactly as you envisaged them, and you can concentrate on delivering the very best presentation.

You can find a useful PDF here detailing which fonts are available on all platforms for maximum compatibility.

Whatever font you do choose for your next PowerPoint presentation, ask yourself two questions:

• Does this font have the right ‘voice’ for your brand?
• Is it easy to read?

If the answer to both of the above is yes, then you are on to a winner. You know best what fits with your brand, and if a font captures your unique voice, and makes your slides easy for your audience to read, you are one step closer to that perfect presentation.

Further reading

For more advice on choosing the best font for your next presentation, and then making the very best of it in your design, take a look at our other articles:

• 10 typography tips and tricks to get you started
• Advanced typography in PowerPoint
• https://www.wired.co.uk/gallery/futura-font-on-the-moon-christopher-burke-book
• https://fontmeme.com/famous-logos-created-with-futura-font/
• https://cei.org/blog/adobe-garamond-harry-potter-books-not-character-font
• https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/itc/franklin-gothic/
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/entasis-definition-architecture-architects.html
• https://study.com/academy/lesson/ogee-arches-definition-construction.html
• http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/through-thick-and-think-fashion-and-type
• https://www.quora.com/Why-don%E2%80%99t-lowercase-and-uppercase-numbers-exist
• https://typographica.org/on-typography/microsofts-cleartype-font-collection-a-fair-and-balanced-review/
• https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/cleartype/clear-type-font-collection
• In addition – Wikipedia pages for each font in the list were used

Elly Hughes

Managing consultant, related articles, mastering high-impact conference presentations.

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Thank you very much for sharing such useful information!

what is the font you used in the text above

We use GT Walsheim as our corporate font (web, print)(which one has to pay for), but because it’s not a Windows standard font we actually use Segoe UI in our presentations.

What is a Bold font we can use?

What is the name of font you use on this website for writing information ..I want this font

It’s GT Walsheim .

Wow that was good but maybe add Mali to the best fonts for google slides and docs

What is the font of the article?

See above in the comments… GT Walsheim

Loved it. Thanks a lot Bright Carbon team

What font did you write this article in?

See comments above – GT Walsheim, which is a paid font, and not great for presentations as it isn’t on many machines.

Thanks, this helped me with my school presentation!

Absolutely great thank you!

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10 minute read

How to Choose the Best Font for PowerPoint Presentations

Saikat Basu

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An image on a slide may speak a thousand words, but you do need text to explain the finer details. And that’s where choosing the best font for PowerPoint presentations becomes a critical exercise. In short, if you want to make a flawless PowerPoint presentation , you must pay attention to your fonts.

The interesting thing about fonts is that each has a personality. It’s like the three-piece suit that will be out of place at a barbeque but is perfect for an evening at the Savoy.

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Why is choosing the right fonts so critical?

Slides aren’t like the pages of a book. They are billboards on the highway. 

When you run through your slides, they will linger for just a few seconds. The words on the slides have to capture interest, send the right message, and support the visuals in those few seconds.

Fonts influence your audience by setting the tone and atmosphere of the presentation. The right choice of fonts or font pairings can make your text stand out by separating it from other elements around it. Typefaces are also brand symbols that help the audience relate to it through the presentation.

Before you get into the deep end, let’s learn the distinction between two major font types.

What are serif and sans serif fonts?

Times New Roman is the classic example of a serif font. The letters have tiny extensions that appear to connect them together in words as one letter leads to the next. 

Newspapers and magazines use serif fonts for body text as they are easier to read. Serif fonts have distinct line heights that make them more legible in dense copy.

They lose this clarity if you pack them together in the body. That’s why designers recommend sans serif fonts for titles, headings, and captions in your slides.

The critical font pair: title vs body text

All Microsoft PowerPoint presentations by default start with two fonts — one font for the headings and one for the body text. This font pairing decides the entire look of the presentation. The theme plays an important role in the font choices and even blank presentations give you a theme to build upon.

The first question you may have to answer is how big your fonts should be? The simple answer is that it depends. Factors like screen size and room size dictate the limits of font size. Font sizes can hinge upon you emailing the presentation or delivering it live on stage or on a PC screen in a remote meeting. 

Also, all fonts have an optimum size for legibility. Arial is clear at 12pts while Times New Roman is readable at 10pts. 

Most presentation experts recommend these size ranges. The thumb rule — a larger font size with less text on screen is always good.

The default slide in PowerPoint starts with 60pts for section headers and 24pts for body font.

• Header Font: Between 26 and 42 point
• Body Font: Between 18 and 24 point

You can use the same font for both, but that can limit the visual impact of your slide.

10 tips for choosing the best font for PowerPoint presentations

Never sacrifice readability for style. With that motto in mind, follow these Microsoft PowerPoint tips to choose the best fonts for your business presentation or any other.

1. Choose two fonts

Three fonts can be a crowd. Choose two fonts wisely and use size, contrast, and color to combine them for visual interest. Font pairing is a critical part of PowerPoint presentations and you will have to spend a lot of time on this decision. The second font shouldn’t be too unlike or too similar to the primary typeface where you miss the distinction.

Tip: There are many font pairing tools available on the web. But play the TypeConnection typography game if you want to get better at it yourself.

2. Choose standard fonts

You want your presentation to look the same on all devices. Choose from standard fonts and you won’t have to rescue your slides from turning into a mishmash on another screen. You can be more imaginative if you are presenting to children or at Comic Con, but standard fonts are the safest bet always.

Tip: Here’s a complete list of fonts available on Windows 10 .

3. Avoid script fonts and decorative text

Script fonts like Lucida Calligraphy or Gothic fonts like Century are always difficult to read. You can use them if the topic of the talk demands it.

4. Create visual interest with serif and sans serif fonts

As we emphasized earlier, serif and sans serif fonts have their own advantages and disadvantages. You can pair them and tap into their strengths.

5. Select color and create contrast

Go for font colors that are a part of your brand. Using color swatches and precise Hexadecimal or RGB values ensures colors stay consistent across slides. 

Also, you might have to check your slide for accessibility for all as someone in the audience can be color blind and may not be able to decipher red or green.

Tip: There are many color palette generators available on the web for free. Try Coolors .

6. Have contrasting text and background colors

Fonts must stand out against the background. The higher the contrast between the two, the better the readability across the room will be. Use the color wheel to pick the background and the font colors. Opposite colors on the color wheel clash with each other and have the maximum contrast. For instance, orange on blue.

Always use the same background on each slide. Text against white backgrounds is not legible in a larger room. For the best results, opt for dark slides with light-colored text.

Tip: Go through a gallery of well-designed PowerPoint templates or use PowerPoint Designer as a shortcut to grasp the interplay of contrast.

7. Less is more with caps and italics

Don’t capitalize all the letters in the body text as it is difficult to read. Selectively use caps for acronyms and for emphasis. Similarly, choose italics sparingly for quotes or highlighting the names of books, authors, and journal titles, etc. 

You can make a creative choice by using italic text sparingly for impact or you can also substitute them with subtle formatting to the standard fonts.

Tip: Caps and italics may be able to work with specific fonts, but you may need access to those fonts. You can use Picsart's text editor to play around with text that may suit your presentation better.

8. Limit the use of animated fonts

Animated fonts can be distracting. Avoid animating your text or use it only if it serves a functional purpose. Ask yourself if it adds clarity to your data or is just a cute effect.

9. Keep an eye on font tracking and kerning

Learn these two typography terms and you will have an easier time placing your words on the slide. Kerning adjusts the spacing between two adjacent letters in a font. Tracking adjusts the space between all letters together. Both influence the readability of text.

For instance, you can avoid using narrow or condensed typefaces. Instead, pick a thicker font and tweak it with tracking and kerning within PowerPoint. 

For more on changing the spaces between text, read this Microsoft support article .

Tip: Play the KernType typography game to get familiar with the basics of the two principles.

10. Make interesting shape effects

It doesn’t always have to be just about fonts and simple colors. The Shape Effects panel on PowerPoint gives you a lot of control over the finished appearance of text on the slide. 

For instance, you can adjust the transparency of the letters. You can also “texturize” the words by using pictures to fill the words instead of a solid fill color. 

• Select the word and right click. 
• From the context menu, click on Format Text Effects.
• The Format Shape panel is displayed on the right. 
• Select Text Options > Text Fill & Outline.
• Choose Picture or texture fill. 

You can now use an image or any texture to decorate your words. Picture or texture fills are a creative way to use standard fonts but still make them stand apart on your slides. Of course, never overdo it. 

Tip: Shape effects go well with thicker fonts.

15 of the most versatile fonts you can use in PowerPoint

These fonts (and a few more) are versatile because they are standard fonts and are available on both Windows and macOS. You don’t have to go after fancy typefaces just yet. Focus on your layout. Use the design pointers from the above list and give your slides an attractive makeover.

• Franklin Gothic
• Times New Roman
• Palatino       

Think of typography in PowerPoint as design

Practice with your eye. Play one font against the other for interesting unions. Typography isn’t just for selecting fonts and using them to occupy your slide with words. It is an essential design element in any place where visual communication matters. You can design your presentations faster once you work out how fonts work together and learn a bit about color theory. 

Want to learn more about how good design comes together? Start with some of the basic and advanced PowerPoint techniques .

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Saikat is a writer who hunts for the latest tricks in Microsoft Office and web apps. He doesn't want to get off the learning curve, so a camera and a harmonica claim an equal share of his free time.

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The Five Best Fonts for Presentations and Why They Work So Well

Fonts, typefaces, and typography are topics covered in numerous books and articles. The majority of them describe fonts, typefaces, and how they appear in print. However, there are few books and articles that explain how to choose fonts for workshop presentations. I did some research and testing and found the five best fonts for presentations.

The 5 best fonts for presentations are Frutiger, Futura, Gill Sans, Helvetica, and Verdana. These fonts work because they are sans-serif fonts, with large x-heights and they are sharp and legible when displayed on a screen.

This article will show you how I choose these fonts that I use in my workshop presentations.

What are the five best fonts for presentations?

Over the years, I read a lot of books and articles about fonts, typefaces, and typography. Many of these books and articles explain the history and characteristics of numerous fonts and typefaces. These books and articles, however, are not particularly useful when I am looking for fonts to use in my development workshops.

Of the hundreds of fonts available, I choose fonts simply by selecting fonts that work for me. Below is what I did, and you may want to try variations of it in your search for the best fonts.

1. Find fonts that are suitable for presentations.

Since my task is to deliver an interesting development workshop, I want fonts that are good for displaying text clearly on the screen without being outlandish. This means sticking to serif and sans-serif fonts and excluding display, script, freehand, novelty, and calligraphic fonts. If you are new to fonts and typography and don’t know what are serif and sans-serif fonts, below are two examples of serif fonts and two examples of sans-serif fonts.

A serif font has small strokes (or serifs) attached to a longer stroke. Please see the serif fonts in the diagram above. Some examples of serif fonts are Baskerville and Times New Roman. A sans-serif font, on the other hand, does not have these small strokes. Some examples of sans-serif fonts are Frutiger and Gill Sans.

Since there are quite a large number of serif and sans-serif fonts, I need to narrow them down to a few. To find out which fonts are ‘better’, I showed many PowerPoint slides using serif and sans-serif fonts and I asked my workshop participants which fonts they preferred. Many preferred the slides using sans-serif fonts like Frutiger and Helvetica instead of slides using serif fonts like Baskerville and Times New Roman.

You may want to try out different fonts, including the newer Google Fonts like Roboto and Open Sans, and find out which fonts your workshop participants prefer.

2. Find fonts that are legible on the screen.

A font is legible if its characters are easily distinguishable from other characters. A common example is the letter ‘I’ should look different from the number ‘1’. Another example is the letter ‘O’ should look different from the number ‘0’. Yet another example is distinguishing between the letter ‘c’ and the letter ‘e’.

Unfortunately, many sans-serif fonts have the upper-case letter ‘I’ looking very similar to the lower-case letter ‘l’. For example, in the phrase “I like to …”, you can see the first two characters are identical although they are different letters. By the way, the font used in the phrase and in this article is Open Sans, a sans-serif font.

Font’s x-height

A font’s x-height is the height of a lowercase ‘x’ character, measured from its baseline. Fonts with a large x-height are more legible than fonts with a small x-height. Below are the x-heights of three fonts.

In the above diagram, the bottom black line is the baseline, the red line is the median line, and the top blue line is the ascender line. The x-height is the distance between the black baseline and the red median line, and the font height is the distance between the black baseline and the blue ascender line.

Frutiger has a larger x-height than Gill Sans and Times New Roman, making it more legible, especially at a distance than the other two fonts. So, choose fonts with an x-height for legibility.

For a classroom setting where participants are seated facing a screen, sans-serif fonts with font sizes from 24px to 32px are quite readable. So, choose fonts with sizes 24px and larger .

Although using this font size suggestion for readability is easy to do, the projector screen and the venue are usually beyond your control. A screen that is too big for a small classroom is ineffective. Neither is a small screen in a large room. There are many poorly designed lecture theatres that can seat 300 students but have screens that are meant for classrooms.

If the screen and the projector are movable, you can adjust the distance between them to get the sharpest text images that are readable on the screen. However, if the screen and projector are fixed on the wall or ceiling, there’s not much you can do to improve readability. You can enlarge or reduce the size of the fonts in your PowerPoint layouts, but that is likely to end up in a mess if you try to do that just before the start of the workshop.

Font’s line spacing

Line spacing is the space between two lines of text and it has an impact on readability. If the line spacing is small, it is harder to read, as shown in the diagram below.

A 1.1-line spacing is easier to read as compared to 1.0 (or single) line spacing. A 1.2-line spacing is even easier to read. However, the larger the line spacing, the few lines of text you can put on the screen.

Font and background colors

Many studies recommend using dark text on a light background. The most commonly used combination is black lettering on a white background. This combination is also recommended by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services in their usability guidelines .

There are also studies that recommend using very dark gray (hex #444444) instead of black (hex #000000) for lettering on a white background, or using black lettering on an off-white (hex #F5F5F5) or ivory (hex #FFFF0) background.

The font and background color combination I find most readable are black letterings on a white background. Many of my workshop participants have no complaints about this combination. One interesting feedback I received from my participants is that many of them prefer black lettering on a white background over white lettering on a black background.

4. Fonts with special characters

If your workshop deals with numbers and mathematical equations, then you will need a font that has numbers, symbols, mathematical symbols, subscripts, superscripts, and Greek characters, to display mathematical equations effectively. Although most fonts have special characters and symbols, some may not have the ones that you require. So, you need to double-check.

A simple way to check whether the font you selected has the character you want is to go to the font’s Character Map .

To do this in Windows 10, click the Start button, scroll down to the Windows Accessories folder, expand the folder, and select Character Map. Select the font and see if it has the character that you want. If yes, select the character and copy it to your Powerpoint presentation.

Another way to get mathematical symbols is to download the Math Symbol Font (maths.ttf) and install it.

How to test the fonts you selected

Now that you’ve chosen a few fonts for presentations, the ‘best’ way to test them is to use them in your workshop and see which font your workshop participants prefer. So, when would be the best time to do this?

I do my font testing after the Q & A (Questions and Answers) session. Once I finished the Q & A session, I usually ask participants if there is anything that they think will make the workshop better, such as more examples, more individual exercises, more group activities, or more videos. Following that, I will show two PowerPoint pages with the same text but with different fonts and background colors, and ask which one they prefer. This test is far from perfect but it works for me.

The best fonts for workbooks and handouts

Many trainers give out handouts and notes during workshop sessions. Can those fonts for presentations be used in these printed materials? Yes, they can, although I prefer serif fonts for this.

Here’s why: I read Drew Whitman’s book Cashvertising a few years ago, and he quoted a font study that showed that people understand a paragraph set in a serif typeface better than the same paragraph set in a sans-serif typeface. That piqued my interest, and I did similar tests. I gave my workshop participants workbooks that used serif and sans-serif fonts. Surprisingly, many participants preferred workbooks using serif fonts like Minion and Times New Roman.

So, for printed materials like handouts, workbooks, and a list of references , I use Minion which is a serif font.

Font typeface, users, and designers

Here are some fun facts about the fonts I like to use in my presentations:

Frutiger , designed by Adrian Frutiger in 1975, has a humanist sans-serif typeface. The font is very legible from a distance and it is used on signs at numerous transportation hubs. Amtrak, National Health Service, Charles de Gaulle Airport, Port Authority of New York, Schiphol Airport, and Union Bank of Switzerland use Frutiger in their signage.

Futura , designed by Paul Renner in 1927, has a geometric sans-serif typeface. The font is based on geometric shapes, especially circles and ovals. Futura is used by companies such as Fox News, HP, Royal Dutch Shell, Swissair, and Volkswagen.

Gill Sans , designed by Eric Gill in 1927, has a humanist sans-serif typeface. It is a highly readable font and many people say that it has a distinctively British look. Initially designed for display purposes, Gill Sans is now used in posters and advertisements by companies such as Benetton, British Rail, and John Lewis.

Helvetica , designed by Max Miedinger in 1957, has a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface. This font is very popular and it is highly legible because of its large x-height. BMW, GM, Lufthansa, Nestle, and Verizon are among the companies that use Helvetica.

Minion , designed by Robert Slimbach in 1989, has a neohumanist serif typeface. The font is designed for extended reading of body text and is used in many books.

Verdana , designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft in 1996, has a humanist sans-serif typeface, similar to that of Frutiger. The font has a large x-height, making it very legible. It is also wider than most sans-serif fonts. Verdana is very readable on computer screens and many websites use it. Aston Martin, Concorde, and Jaguar are among the companies that use Verdana.

My five best fonts for presentations are:

• Frutiger for business and management workshops
• Futura for creativity and innovation workshops
• Gill Sans for workshops with lots of content
• Helvetica for workshops that are “conservative”
• Verdana for IT and high tech workshops

I select these fonts for presentations simply by displaying PowerPoint slides with these fonts to my workshop participants and asking them which ones they prefer. This way of selecting fonts is not scientific but, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it worked for me. I have been using these five fonts for years.

Try these fonts in your workshop presentation and let me know what your workshop participants think about them. Most importantly, have fun with fonts.

• Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style . Hardley & Marks. 1997.
• Whitman, D E. Cashvertising . Career Press. 2008.

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The best tips for using fonts in presentations

Each design element in a presentation has a crucial role to play. The choice of fonts to use and the way they are employed cannot be a matter of chance. 

Learn, below, the best tips for using fonts in your Google Slides or PowerPoint presentations . With these simple tips, it will be easier for you to know which font to use on your slides, how to combine different types, and what tricks you should follow to make your text stand out.  

Choose easy-to-read fonts

Limit the number of typographies selected, avoid using similar fonts, create a visual hierarchy, be careful when choosing colors, combine different text weights, maintain harmony with the design, theme, and audience.

Which typography is the most suitable for a presentation? One that is 100% legible for your audience. Always prioritize the use of fonts that are easy to read from a certain distance, as it is essential that everyone can see the main content of your presentation without much effort.

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When you are editing a Google Slides or PowerPoint presentation, try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Ask yourself, "Will this font look right when I put the projector on?”. If you have doubts, discard it and look for another alternative. 

Always use common sense. If you are going to present in class or at work, this is not the time to be creative by using fonts with unusual strokes, which are designed for other uses. 

In order to give coherence to your design, don’t incorporate more than three different fonts in the same presentation! Using too many different fonts will distract the listener, who will not know how you are organizing the content and which parts you want to emphasize.

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With your favorite presentation editor already open, during the design process, assign each font a specific use. For example, if you like three different styles, you can use one for titles, one for subtitles, and one for body text.

Typographies generate a great visual impact. They have the power to highlight the most valuable content, which means that they give strength to one message over another. 

When we look at a slide, our eyes scan the information following the order and coherence that has been previously established through the use of different font combinations. For a cleaner design, you shouldn't use fonts that are too similar to each other, but rather combinations that contrast and at the same time complement each other.

Apply the combination of Sans Serif + Serif

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Don't know which typographies generate a good balance? There is a combination of typographic styles that is a hit: a Sans Serif font with a Serif font.

Serif typographies are characterized by being more formal and elegant. You can recognize serif fonts by the small endings at the ends of each letter. Some examples of this type of font are Times New Roman or Georgia .

On the other hand, we have the opposite side: Sans Serif typographies. They are casual, informal, and more modern. These fonts have simpler lines, which makes them more legible. Within this category, we would highlight Helvetica, Optima, or Futura fonts, as they are more widely used.

Although these two styles are very different from each other, they go great together! Try the contrast generated by introducing them in the same slide.

Does all the content of a presentation have the same importance? Of course not! In a single slide, you can find many types of text according to their function, such as section headings, subheadings, numerical data, definitions, clarifying data, results, reflections, quotations, and many other options.

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Make use of different font sizes to make some text extracts more emphasized by making their size larger. A skillful application of varied font sizes can draw attention to important text elements, guiding readers through your content hierarchy. However, it's not just about size – the spacing between letters, known as kerning, also plays a vital role in optimizing legibility and visual appeal. Discover more about the art of kerning and its impact on typography in our comprehensive guide: What is kerning and how to apply to typography .

If you want to learn more about visual hierarchy, here is a post about composition tips to design your slides.

What is the point of using the perfect typographies if you use a color that cannot be seen in the background? As we have previously indicated, a presentation must be seen at a reasonable distance and under the expected level of illumination.

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The different colors applied must meet the following requirements:

• They must be in line with the design of the template. Apply colors that match your brand or that fit with the basic structure of your presentation. If the template is minimalist and has darker tones, it would not make much sense to use very vivid and colorful tones and in the opposite case, where the design is more colorful, we should not go out of the pre-established schemes.

• Contrast is necessary. What color is the text written on? The content must have a color that stands out from afar. On a grey background, it is not a good idea to use white text. However, don't overdo it with shades that are too different, either, as they can be quite jarring.

• Keep in mind where you will be presenting. The lighting, the location of the projector or the size of the room can work against you. Try to reduce risks by opting for clear color combinations.

Both PowerPoint and Google Slides have many tools to set the perfect text format to use. We recommend you modify the weight of your text to highlight keywords or concepts.

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Remember that all information is not essential. You must be able to synthesize your content to avoid overloading the slides with a lot of text. Show the essential points and point out the concepts you want your listeners to retain. 

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Before you start designing your presentation or choosing a template, ask yourself several questions: Who am I speaking to? What is the central theme of my presentation? These two ideas will help you focus on the design as a whole.

All the elements of a presentation must be adapted to the target audience. If your main target is a university class, your choice of fonts and colors will be different than if you are giving a lesson in front of elementary school children.

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In addition, the main topic of your presentation already limits the fonts to be used, as you would not use some combinations, for example, for a formal presentation in front of investors for your company.

With practice, you will internalize the tips of this post to show the best side of your work in your next presentation. As time is short, we invite you to explore Slidesgo's collection of free Google Slides and PowerPoint templates , where you will find hundreds of templates with different font combinations. 

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20 Most Popular & Professional Presentation Fonts to Use in 2024

Table of Contents

Presentations are important business communication tools or materials that marketers and professionals use to share improtant business ideas, progress reports, information, facts, or figures with a group of people.

Although there is always a presenter available to present the information and coordinate discussion among the audience. The majority of the time during presentations, the audience also read through the presentation slides which makes it imperative that you use the right fonts for presentations.

Fonts play a crucial role in the readability of your presentation slides. Beyond this, they also set the tone of the message and effectively convey the message of the presentation to increase its overall success .

Hence, you must choose the right PowerPoint fonts for your Powerpoint presentations. In this article, we have identified the 20 best and most popular presentation fonts to use to create professional presentations this 2024.

Keep reading!

Brief Overview of the Best PowerPoint Presentation fonts

Presentation fonts play a significant role in the way the core messages in the presentation are conveyed and understood by the audience. This is why you need to be intentional about the type of fonts you choose for your presentations.

The four main types of fonts that you most certainly choose from include the following: Serif font, Sans serif font, script font, and decorative font.

1. Serif Fonts: These are classic fonts designed by William Caslon in 1734 and have been around since then. This font is known for having decorative flicks or an extra tail at the end of each letter.

Serif fonts add a sense of timelessness and tradition to a brand and are popular among law, finance, journalism, and jewelry-making businesses among others. Popular Serifs include Times New Roman, Garamond, Century, Bodini, Lucida, Bookman, and many more.

2. Sans Serif Fonts: These are modern, sharp, and stylish fonts without the extra tails at the end of the letters. They are well known for their clarity and legibility and make the perfect choice for brands looking to appear futuristic.

Popularly used in technology, gaming, consulting, fashion, automobile, and manufacturing industries. Popular sans serif fonts include Arial, Calibri, Helvetica , Tahoma, Open sans, Futura, Lucida Sans, and many others.

3. Script fonts: Script or Cursive fonts are characterized by curvy, stylish typography element that makes them look similar to handwriting.

Depending on the type of script font you use and what you are using it for, some can be highly decorative and feminine while others can look more plain and retro. Some of the popular script fonts include Dancing Script, Lobster, Pacifico, Allura, Parisienne, and many more.

4. Decorative Fonts : Slightly similar to the Script fonts, Decorative fonts are decorative versions of Serif, Sans Serif, Script, and other font types that are mostly used to capture attention and create unique designs. Some of the popular decorative fonts are Cooper Black, Abril Fatface, Gilroy, Bourton font, and many more.

7 Tips to Consider When Choosing the Best Fonts for Your Presentation

Your choice of fonts for your presentation determines its success which is why you need to be very intentional and well-informed about the different types of fonts available and how they all impact your presentation’s success.

To choose the best fonts that increase your presentation readability, legibility, and easy comprehension of your message, we have identified 5 key tips you should consider when choosing the best fonts for your presentations. They include:

1. Choose a simple font

The general idea of choosing a professional font for your presentation is to aid readability and get them to stick with you. Using complicated (hard-to-read) fonts like most scripts and decorative fonts will make your presentation design look chaotic, making it hard for your audience to read what’s on your slides.

However, simple and easy-to-read fonts like serif and san serif fonts, contribute to the overall aesthetics of the design and encourage readers to pay attention to you. Check out the perfect presentation design ideas for inspiration.

2. Prioritize a Sans Serif font over a Serif font

Although we have earlier stated that you should Sans serif and serif fonts over the script and decorative fonts. However, if you are faced with choosing between a San Serif font and a Serif font, you should choose a sans serif font over a serif.

This is solely because the sans serif typeface is much easier to read on-screen compared with the serif font style that has a tail at the end of the letters. Using a modern sans serif font can enhance legibility, readability, and audience attention .

3. Avoid all caps fonts

Although several findings have reported that using capital letters in writing conveys a feeling of power, the audience may perceive this as you shouting at them. In addition to this, using all-caps fonts can also be difficult to read, especially in a block of text.

4. Choose a font that looks good in big and small sizes

The general rule for choosing font sizes in your PowerPoint presentation is not to go below 24 points for the title and 14 – 16 points for the text. To increase readability, keep in mind to choose a font that looks good when thin or thick to aid clarity and quality irrespective of the size even when scaled from 120 points down to 12 points.

5. Choose a different font for your titles and headings

For better readability, consider using different fonts for your title, heading, and subheading fonts to create better emphasis and visual hierarchy. However, keep in mind to not have more than four (4) fonts in your presentation to create a cohesive and visually organized design. The fonts should also be bold and have a bigger font size.

6. Choose complementary fonts

Presentations have to be visually appealing with all design elements well coordinated. If you looking to create balance and coherence in your design, consider using fonts that complement each other to make the design stand out . You must also ensure that this font stands on its own but look good when used together.

7. Choose the right colors and contrast for your font

Colors evoke power and can significantly impact how the font appears in your presentation. Remember that the whole idea of choosing the right fonts is to aid readability and engage your audience. Choosing the right colors and aiming for a clear contrast ensuring that the colors don’t clash. Check out the finest guide for how to create an attractive presentation design .

20 Most Popular and Professional Fonts for Presentations in 2024

Here are the best 20 professional fonts to use for your presentations in 2024.

Presentation Font #1: Verdana

Verdana is highly recognized as one of the best fonts for PowerPoint for its optimization for digital display and its easy compatibility with almost all Windows and Mac computers. Interestingly, Verdana is a recent font created by Mathew Carter in 1996 for Microsoft which further shows you should choose it for your presentation.

Verdana’s best features include its wide spaces with tall lowercase letters and counters making it an excellent choice for body text, which aids readability.

Presentation Font #2: Tahoma

Tahoma is one of the most unique, custom fonts developed in 1995 and has grown in popularity among presentation designers. Although it looks similar to Verdana, Tahoma is more tightly spaced and formal than Verdana. An exciting feature of Tahoma is that it’s easy to distinguish each letter from another.

For example, the lowercase letter “i” is different from the uppercase “I”, making it easy to eliminate errors in presentations. Tahoma is particularly a good choice for presentations due to its readability and clear letters.

Presentation Font #3: Calibri

Calibri is a popular sans-serif font that has made it to the list for its simple, clear and subtly rounded edges. Although it has been replaced in Microsoft Office 2007 with Arial, it is still the ideal choice Sans Serif PowerPoint font for its universal readability

Presentation Font #4: Georgia

Like Verdana, Georgia is also one of the recent fonts designed by Matthew Carter in 1996. As a popular modern serif font, Georgia features thick and thin strokes with tall lowercase letters giving a classic look which makes it an excellent choice for your professional presentations.

Interestingly, Georgia is known to be a good alternative to Times New Roman only that it’s slightly larger.

Presentation Font #5: Palatino

The Palatino is one of the popular presentation fonts designed by Hermann Zapf in 1949 originating from the Italian Renaissance.

Influenced by his calligraphic works, the Palatino font was created primarily for advertising, print media headings, and low-quality paper and small-sized prints. Palatino’s solid and wide structure greatly enhances readability especially when read or view from afar, making it an excellent choice for your PowerPoint presentations.

Presentation Font #6: Corbel

As a font designed with the sole aim of providing clean text without clutter on the screen, the Corbel font makes an excellent presentation font to consider in 2024. Corbel is a humanist simple sans serif font released in 2005 for Microsoft’s clear-type rendering and specifically designed for LCD monitors.

Its clean and clear characters with wide spacing don’t clutter the screen and make a great choice for presentations that calls for massive contrast. Although it is slightly similar to Candara fonts, Corbel’s lowercase I’s and ‘J’s have box dots instead of circles on Candara making them more assertive.

Presentation Font #7: Gill Sans

Gill Sans is a classic presentation font that gives a warm and friendly appeal to PowerPoint presentations like Helvetica. If you are looking for a font that best pairs with a simple font like Times New Roman, there’s none better than Gill Sans font.

An interesting feature of Gill Sans font is its multiple options and compatibility with various other fonts. It also contains legible prints that make it easy for your audience to read the presentation from a distance.

Presentation Font #8: Garamond

Garamond font was created in the 1500s by Claude Garamond, making it one of the oldest fonts. Rather than being a font itself, Garamond is a style of font that offers users many unique options such as Adobe Garamond, Monotype Garamond, and Garamond ITC.

Its commanding and well-structured characters provide a great contrast between the title and text, making them a perfect choice for body text.

Presentation Font #9: Futura

Futura is a popular go-to font for many brand logo designs. Created in 1927, Futura’s variants and versatility make it a popular don’t choice for PowerPoint presentations.

This typeface projects the feeling of adaptability and forwardness with a touch of modernity making it an ideal choice for headline and body text.

Presentation Font #10: Lato

Lato is a basic sans-serif font with a modern appeal and normal and bold weights that help offset the light in different designs and headings.

It is a versatile font with nine weights ranging from hairline and thin to light to bold, making it a perfect choice for any presentation. Lato works well as a sliding header or the main header and its ability to convey professionalism makes it a good choice for your pitch decks.

Presentation Font #11: Roboto

The Roboto typeface is a basic sans-serif font that is modern, easily recognizable, and approachable. It features professional, easy-to-read, and well-designed characters that you can use across different presentations. Roboto is most appropriate for body texts and pairs easily with other fonts.

Presentation Font #12: Century Gothic

Century Gothic is a sans serif typeface with a geometric style released by Monotype Imaging in 1991.

It was designed solely to compete with the Futura font and has a similar style to Futura but a larger x-height. It is mostly used in advertising, displays work, and is a great choice for headlines, and small quantities of text.

Presentation Font #13: Segoe

The Segoe font is Microsoft’s choice for its logo and other marketing materials since the days of Windows Vista.

Though it shares similarities with Verdana, its warm, inviting looks with wider space and heavier letters make this family of fonts a perfect choice for your presentation headers.

Presentation Font #14: Montserrat

Montserrat is a new geometric sans serif typeface designed by Julieta Ulanovsky, an Argentine graphic designer in 2011. Inspired by posters, and signed and painted windows from the first half of the twentieth century in the historic Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires, Montserrat is one of the popular font choices that fit well in headings and PowerPoint slides.

Its bold characters help your slide titles and headers to stand out to your audience, showing the audience what to expect each time you move to a new slide.

Presentation Font #15: Open Sans

Open Sans is a sans serif typeface designed in 2010 by Steve Matteson and is a commonly used font for body paragraphs due to its legibility. It was designed with open forms, neutral but friendly appearance. As a basic sans serif font, Open sans provides a perfect way to visualize the larger pieces of text you might include on a slide.

It has excellent legible characteristics in its letterforms and was optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces.

Presentation Font #16: Abril Fatface

Abril Fatface is a slab serif font that has a bolder appearance that helps to grab the attention of the audience. It is a great font for creating eye-catching headlines on your presentation slides but keeps in mind that it should only be used with short headings or pieces of text.

A bold font like Abril Fatface can be hard to read if used in paragraphs or longer sentences. It pairs nicely with fonts like Helvetica or Verdana. A good alternative for this slab serif font alternative is Rockwell or a bold Trocchi.

Presentation Font #17: Helvetica

Helvetica is a widely used classic sans serif font that has retained its spot as a popular people’s choice for a good reason.

Developed by Swiss typeface designers, Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann in 1957, Helvetica is an excellent font choice to use for headers and titles in live presentations where some of the audience might be far away from the front row (viewing from a distance.

To effectively communicate and create presentations that stand out, ensure that you use Helvetica as a bold text on headings and titles.

Presentation Font #18: League Spartan

League Spartan is a new simple, modern, and geometric sans serif font with a bold, uniform, and minimalistic nature that makes it a good font choice for headings and titles. League Spartan works best as a header in infographics or cartoon-style presentations with the sole purpose of converting difficult or complex information into easy-to-remember points.

On a general note, League Spartan’s simplicity makes it a great choice for infographics. However, keep in mind that using League Spartan in bold settings can make paragraphs and letter bodies heavy. So stick to the normal font when using it.

Presentation Font #19: Playfair Display

Playfair Display is an open-source chic and highly fashionable serif font designed by a Danish designer, Claus Eggers Sørensen who developed it off of Baskerville font.

It has a strong box with the majority of its character placed in between the baseline and X-height. Playfair Display has high contrast between its thick and thin lines making it an ideal font choice for logos, strong titles, and headers.

Presentation Font #20: Raleway

Raleway is an elegant sans serif typeface designed by Matt McInerney in a single thin weight with a display face that features both old style and lining numerals.

However, due to popular demand, it was given a heaver and italicized version for users. While the bold and light versions of Raleway have been designed to be very versatile, its italicized version help increases legibility with the off-centered markings.

Raleway font can be used anywhere from bold headers to lighter body texts in a presentation. Keep in mind that when written in bold and capitalized text, it makes a good fit for titles and header font that can easily capture the audience’s attention.

Presentation fonts like colors do the magic trick on the visual appeal of presentations. Without the right choice of fonts, your presentation may fall apart and fail to engage your audience during presentations.

Although there are no hard rules when it comes to choosing the right fonts for presentations, however, we have identified the top 20 most popular and professional fonts to choose from. Nonetheless, take your time researching more fonts that you can use beyond the ones we have identified above.

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How to Make a “Good” Presentation “Great”

• Guy Kawasaki

Remember: Less is more.

A strong presentation is so much more than information pasted onto a series of slides with fancy backgrounds. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others. Here are some unique elements that make a presentation stand out.

• Fonts: Sans Serif fonts such as Helvetica or Arial are preferred for their clean lines, which make them easy to digest at various sizes and distances. Limit the number of font styles to two: one for headings and another for body text, to avoid visual confusion or distractions.
• Colors: Colors can evoke emotions and highlight critical points, but their overuse can lead to a cluttered and confusing presentation. A limited palette of two to three main colors, complemented by a simple background, can help you draw attention to key elements without overwhelming the audience.
• Pictures: Pictures can communicate complex ideas quickly and memorably but choosing the right images is key. Images or pictures should be big (perhaps 20-25% of the page), bold, and have a clear purpose that complements the slide’s text.
• Layout: Don’t overcrowd your slides with too much information. When in doubt, adhere to the principle of simplicity, and aim for a clean and uncluttered layout with plenty of white space around text and images. Think phrases and bullets, not sentences.

As an intern or early career professional, chances are that you’ll be tasked with making or giving a presentation in the near future. Whether you’re pitching an idea, reporting market research, or sharing something else, a great presentation can give you a competitive advantage, and be a powerful tool when aiming to persuade, educate, or inspire others.

• Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist at Canva and was the former chief evangelist at Apple. Guy is the author of 16 books including Think Remarkable : 9 Paths to Transform Your Life and Make a Difference.

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How to choose the best font for a scientific presentation?

• April 11, 2022
• CAREER SKILLS

Are you the type of person who spends more time designing your presentation theme than creating the slides for the presentation the next day? Are you the type of person who wakes up in the middle of the night searching the internet for the best font for a scientific presentation?

Good! It means that you are passionate about being a better “communicator”. It does matter more than you think, especially in academia.

Presenting your work is as crucial as, if not more important than conducting research. Unfortunately, scientists have a reputation for being poor presenters. There is no purpose in doing research in the first place if one cannot communicate their knowledge. So, as future scientists, we should make a point to be good communicators.

A good presentation is a lot more than just “reporting” your research work. The mere goal of a presentation is to influence your listeners .

There should be some constraints in a professional setting to avoid unnecessary distractions. And you have to be careful to keep the presentation content simple and to the point. So, How to make a presentation that has all these elements?

The design choices we make in our presentations – the colours, the icons, the photography and illustrations – all form a kind of shorthand through which our audiences recognize the importance of the work we are doing and get a feel for the message we’re aiming to communicate.

The same rules apply to the fonts we use. Fonts have as significant an impact on design style as the visuals. Beautiful photography and well-designed icons can all be undermined by a poorly-chosen typeface. You should select a typeface that complements the rest of your design style and the essence you want to express. To put it another way, you’ll need a typeface with the appropriate’ voice.’

For instance, understanding enough about typefaces was one of Steve Jobs’ greatest advantages in becoming our generation’s Gutenberg. As he mentioned in one of his famous speeches,

Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, and what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating. How Steve Jobs became the Gutenberg of our times | TypeRoom

“The same way Gutenberg’s printing press gave rise to literacy in the late Renaissance era, Steve Jobs’ digital typefaces gave rise to design as something that is as important as the idea of creating. Everything” Loukas Karnis

The information below will help you choose the best font for your next scientific presentation.

Are you using Windows-standard font?

Custom fonts will be discussed later in this article, but one of the essential points to consider is whether the typeface you want to use is Windows-standard. If you create a stunning presentation using a custom font and then transfer it to a colleague who doesn’t have the font installed, the presentation will be a mess of mis-sized default fonts that isn’t fit for purpose.

So, if you intend to use your presentation on many machines, you’ll need a Windows-standard font that will work on all of them.

This is critical for a variety of reasons. For example, imagine you’re preparing a presentation for a conference.

There is a bigger chance that you might not be presenting on your laptop. Suppose you used a different font that does not come by default in presentation apps like Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple keynote.

In that case, the program will pick another similar font available. In a situation like this, the problem is that your presentation design might be slightly off if your font is different, leading to some serious problems.

I found myself in a similar situation at a conference; for example, some of my slides’ equations were completely off, and some were not even visible. Having to present in front of an audience on top of that additional pressure is not an empowering feeling.

There are two solutions for avoiding such situations:

(1) You can use a default font that comes with the presentation app you will use. There are so many elegant fonts there that come with the presentation apps.

(2) Or, if you want to stick with a specific font that does not come with the presentation app you are using, and if you cannot use your own laptop, you can quickly install the font on the laptop or PC you are using. If you do this at a conference, make sure to take care of it before the conference begins. Even if your presentation is after the coffee break, do not wait until the coffee break to install the font.

Serif or sans serif?

Serif fonts feature small ticks or ‘wings’ at the ends of their lines. They are typically associated with serious, business-like, intellectual content . In contrast, sans serif fonts have no marks on the ends of their lines and are usually regarded as modern, sleek, and clean.

Serif typefaces are superior for print and body text, according to conventional knowledge , since the serifs lead the eye from one character to the next like connected handwriting.

On the other hand, Sans serif fonts are ideal for titles and text displayed on a screen. These aren’t, however, hard and fast norms!

One popular option is to use one of each; for example, titles could be sans serif, and body text could be serif, but the choice is yours – go with what feels best for your presentation.

Factors that affect the readability

It might be good to go for ones that “aren’t built” to be tightly spaced. It provides breathing room within text and headings. It has a lighter appearance and is easier to read when adequately spaced.

Write content in sentence case. Title case can be used in proper titles, product names and service names. Avoid the use of all uppercase or “all caps” in your typography, especially for paragraphs or text.

Write content in sentence case. Proper titles, product names, and service names can all use title cases. In your typography, avoid using all uppercase or “all capitals,” especially for paragraphs or body content.

Belt and suspenders

In typography, the term “belt and suspenders” refers to the use of various styles to reach the same goal. Your presentation font should always be essential when emphasizing words, so keep styles to a minimum.

Avoid using more than two font sizes because it may confuse your audience and make your presentation seem complex. Make sure your font size is at least 18 points.

Best fonts for a scientific presentation

Having so many alternatives to choose from might be intimidating at times. However, in that case, you must ensure that the typefaces you choose have all of the necessary characteristics. As a result, limit yourself to a few fonts. Here are a few such fonts that can be used in any professional presentation.

The typeface Helvetica has been called “the little black dress” of typefaces. Helvetica is a versatile font that may be used in any professional presentation. It has been considered one of the best fonts for a scientific presentation

Read more about Helvetica :

The typeface that landed on the moon. This font is designed with three simple shapes. Circles, triangles and squares. It is one of the most readable typefaces due to its simplicity and is regarded as one of the best fonts for a scientific presentation.

Read more about Futura :

The theme of the font, Avenir is “A time for a font with a human touch”. It has a unique touch as the theme suggests that anybody would be comfortable reading content written in this font. Therefore, this font is especially well-suited to lengthy presentations.

Read more about Avenir :

Final words

It’s never easy to pick the best font for a scientific presentation. However, spending some time picking the correct font for your next presentation would not be a waste of time. Here are the key points for choosing the best font for your next scientific presentation.

• Use one, or a maximum of two, typefaces in your presentation
• Choose suitable font sizes (for titles, body copy) and use them consistently
• Be consistent with the use of bold, italics, or underline typefaces.
• Check if the conference or event has specific guidelines for formatting presentations and make sure to follow them

Images courtesy : Alphabet letters vector created by freepik – www.freepik.com , Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Aruna Kumarasiri

Founder at Proactive Grad, Materials Engineer, Researcher, and turned author. In 2019, he started his professional carrier as a materials engineer with the continuation of his research studies. His exposure to both academic and industrial worlds has provided many opportunities for him to give back to young professionals.

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What fonts to use in your presentation

Fonts greatly impact the look and feel of your presentation. If you are bound by a corporate presentation template, where font use has already been decided for you, skip this section and move on to the next chapter. If not, its important you make a number of educated decisions regarding fonts.

CUSTOM OR STANDARD FONTS

The first choice you have to make, is whether to use custom fonts or stick to the standard ones installed on your computer. When you open a PowerPoint or Keynote file, any custom font not installed, will automatically be replaced by your operating system. While this might work for a textual document or email, it is a disaster for a carefully crafted presentation.

Your characters will look different from what you intended and the worst of it is, that different fonts have slightly different sizes. Text boxes created just wide enough to fit a crucial sentence, now suddenly cut off an extra line added due to the random font replacement. An entire chart can be thrown into chaos.

Such font issues only occur with software that enables text to be edited, such as PowerPoint, Keynote, Word, etc. In other file formats, such as PDF or images (JPG, PNG), fonts are baked in as pixels, so the text appears just as you designed and intended it, regardless of the fonts installed on your machine.

PowerPoint offers the ability to similarly embed fonts into a presentation, but this feature only works on the Microsoft Windows platform. In PowerPoint for Mac OSX, you cannot do this. With an increasing number of people switching to Mac platforms, I would hence not rely on custom fonts. 

Tablets and mobile devices create additional issues for fonts. The font library on a mobile device is even more restricted than that installed on a Mac or a Windows machine. Mobile technology has progressed, but in 2012, presenting a full deck of slides on a mobile device is not customary. 

People check their emails more and more on the go, and your presentation will suffer if it is not legible on their devices because of poor font choice. Create a presentation that will look good on any station or device.

Usually, sans serif fonts work better

STANDARD FONTS

There are two basic types of fonts, serif and sans serif. Serif fonts have little extended hooks at the bottom of each character, and sans serif do not.

For printed copy, serif fonts work great because these hooks help the eye connect between letters on the page you hold. It is similar to cursive handwriting in that sense, and makes it easier to read the text, especially in small font sizes. For on-screen presentations, sans serif fonts are the better option, since they come across clearer in larger font size. In print, designers often use several fonts. Body text is set in one font type, headlines in another, page numbers and footnotes in a third.

For presentation design, it is best to stick with one font to gain a calmer design. If you think about it, all text in a well designed presentation is actually a heading.

GOOD STANDARD SANS SERIF FONTS

Windows : Calibri is standard serif font for PowerPoint. It’s an attractive typeface that’s very legible, but it has fallen victim to its own success, popularity over-identifying it with PowerPoint. You cannot use Calibri and expect to create a “PowerPoint that does not look like PowerPoint.” On a Windows machine, I prefer Arial, the Microsoft variant of Mac’s Helvetica. Arial Black in all-caps looks surprisingly well.

Mac : unlike Microsoft, Apple did decide to pay royalty fees for Helvetica and it’s installed as a standard font on all Apple computers. Helvetica is an excellent choice for a presentation font. Windows automatically replaces Helvetica to Arial. Apple itself uses the font Myriad Pro in its presentations. It looks good, but they run the risk of font replacement, since it is not installed on Windows computers.

iPad : the latest version of iOS includes a fairly rich set of fonts. You can check the web site  iosfonts.com  for a complete list. If you are working within the Apple ecosystem, pick your standard font from this list to ensure your presentation can show up nicely on both Mac and mobile device.

No Comic Sans please

A FONT TO AVOID

Comic Sans  has been profusely used in children’s party invitations and secondhand car ads. Your presentation will inevitably resemble these too if you chose to use this font.

OTHER STANDARD FONTS

Its worth considering these fonts for your presentation, but remember to first check if you like their appearance on mobile devices.

• Century Gothic, a light and elegant font.
• Franklin Gothic, includes a good narrow variety.
• Verdana, very clear for screens, but is very wide and less efficient.

If you cannot decide on a font, use wordmark.it to display a string of text styled in the variety of fonts installed on your computer.

CUSTOM FONTS

If you decided to go for custom fonts, you have the entire universe of font possibilities at your disposal. Still, its advisable to exercise restraint. Custom fonts I use most frequently include different weights of Helvetica, with medium for body text, and bold condensed weight for headlines.

With Arial, the problem is not so much its shape being somewhat less elegant than Helvetica. It’s the fact that it only comes in very limited weights, regular and bold, and correctly choosing the weight of a font has the biggest affect on the visual appearance of your text.

For a more industrial look for your presentation, try setting headlines in the all-caps  Beebas Neue , a free open source font, or  League Gothic  for a narrower setting.

You cannot go wrong with these classics

FONTS CONSIDERED CLASSIC

This last century has introduced a number of fonts considered classics by professional print designers. Here is a partial list that will look good in a presentation design.

• Helvetica Neue , and Helvetica Neue Condensed.
• Frutiger , a predecessor of Helvetica, designed for airport signage.
• Futura , going back to the Bauhaus movement, also look at the Condensed Extra Bold variety which I use for the Idea Transplant logo. Futura is great mainly in all-caps.
• Gill Sans , the original font of the London underground.
• Meta , very legible on screens.
• Myriad Pro , the corporate font of Apple, applied in all their communication.
• Optima , somewhere in between a serif and a sans serif, very elegant yet less legible on screens.
• Univers , a classic similar to Helvetica, which also comes in endless amounts of weights.

There are many books about fonts and typography. The mother of all such books is the  Font Book , weighing some 3kg. Luckily, an  iPad  version  has become available. Weighs a lot less and affordable a lot more.

And now for something completely different

OUTRAGEOUS FONTS

Sometimes a slide design may require an outrageous font, for extremely funny text, extra loud messages, fat styles, handwritten notes or cartoonish messages for which Comic Sans won’t do.

If you use such a font in one slide only, it’s not worth the effort to require its installation on your viewer’s machine. Instead, create the required text on your own machine, save it as an image, and paste it back in your slide. Remember to copy the original, editable text to an appendix, in case you’ll need to make revisions in the future.

Font Squirrel  is a site that offers a rich library of free fonts, and is a good hunting ground for the unusual ones. In book stores you can find numerous print books that come complete with CD-ROMs showcasing free fonts. 

Here are some examples of outrageous fonts I had a chance to use in the past.

• Boopee  for a handwritten effect that looks a lot better than the profusely used Comic Sans font.
• Impact Label  mimics the look of a 1970s labeling machine.
• Feast of flesh  is the basic font type of the Angry Birds game.
• Boycott  is a grunge, distorted, font that comes only in caps.
• American Typewriter  used in the famous “I heart NY” logo, it is another option to consider.

FONT SIZE

There are no rules for the right size font, only general guidelines. A font smaller than 18 points will prove hard to read for audience sitting in the back of the room. I always use PowerPoint’s Slide Sorter view, or the Keynote Light Table view, to present a series of slide thumbnails in front of me. This gives me an idea of how legible my slides are at a distance.

Having said that, bigger size font is not always better. If your slides have ample free space, it might be better to keep it blank. Maintain an elegant, moderately sized text line, instead of filling up the page with large typography.

Software is optimized for using text intended for reading, at 12 - 18 points. Using fonts bigger than these entails increasing the spacing between lines, the so called leading. By default in both PowerPoint and Keynote, the leading between two lines of text is set to 1.0. This means that if you use font size 14, your text leading will be 1.0x14 = 14, as well. This works fine for smaller font sizes. For larger font sizes, I recommend going down to 0.8, or 0.7.

Emphasizing by de-emphasizing

HIGHLIGHTING TEXT

The intuitive approach to highlighting text for emphasis, is applying the full artillery of typographical tools:  bold ,  italic , ALL-CAPS, or  ALL OF THE ABOVE . I find the result is unattractive, and will give your audience the impression you’re broadcasting your message too strongly.

Instead of highlighting text, design your slide so that the text naturally stands out. For example, de-emphasize its surroundings, use white space or color differentiation between text items. A subtle  use of bold  can look good on a slide, but underlining never does.  

QUICK SUM UP

Keep your font choices safe, to ensure your presentation looks great on as many devices as possible.

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How do I find where a specific font is used in PowerPoint?

I know how to replace a font, embedd it etc. but I do not know how to find the place a specific font is used in PowerPoint. Like in Word you can find a specific Format and it will highlight the place...

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Our company doesn't allow unauthorized installs so I couldn't use the slidewise solution and was forced to find a different solution.

Its actually super duper easy and already a feature of PowerPoint:

Ribbon: Home> Replace, click downwards pointing arrow, click "replace fonts" and this way you automatically (without actually finding where it was but who cares where it was ... you will replace all of problematic font with whatever font you choose from the drop down menu.

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Thanks for mentioning and linking to Slidewise Clark! It does indeed help track down rogue fonts. I have attached an image showing how Slidewise lists all fonts, shows which shapes use the font and when you jump to the shape, you can see how the font is used e.g. Complex Scripts, Latin, Bullet or East Asian. Armed with that knowledge, you should be able to find where the font is referenced to fix it or replace it.

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Best Fonts For Architectural Presentation Boards

• by Elif Ayse Fidanci
• 15 October 2021

One of the significant part of the design process is presentation boards. Architectural presentations are your biggest chance to convey your style and idea. Choosing the right font means designing your presentations and portfolio in the appropriate language. Below are influential fonts you may use for architectural designs.

Architect – Geometric Typeface

Architect is a digital typeface inspired by the early era of personal computers. Architect can easily pair with many fonts in your project. It creates impactful layouts with headers, logos, and subtexts. This font is able to use for headlines, logos, layouts and content.

The sans-serif font was created by Paul Renner in the 1920s.It is a classic modern graphic design inspired by Bauhaus techniques. This font causes visual exhaustion when it is used in long texts. In the architectural boards, Futura should be used as titles and subtitles.

Neutraface is a geometric sans-serif typeface designed by Christian Schwartz. It was influenced by the work of modernist architect Richard Neutra and was developed with the assistance of Neutra’s son and former partner, Dion Neutra. The designer has taken care of designing the alphabet according to the architect’s layout It is highly used in architectural presentation as a competitor for Futura.

For presentations that has minimalistic and modern theme presentation, Helvetica is one of the most important font to consider. Designed in the last decade by Eduard Hoffmann and  Max Miedinger, the font is professionally acclaimed. It is extensively used thanks for its concise and balanced design.

Gotham is designed by Tobias Frere-Jones in 2000s.Gotham that is a geometric sans serif font typography can be readily used for paragraphs as well as headers. In architecture, this font should be used in business cards and logos because of its lines transmit a kind of credibility.

Marsek Display

Marsek is a solid display font, created to emphasys big headline, title, single character. Also, it can be used for short description paragraph This sans serif font comes in three sophisticated weights you can mix and match, or use on their own. It’s ideal for used in titles, logos, and posters.

RNS Sanz is an architectural font that is clear and clean. It is a functional font with 7 weights, ramping from light to black, small caps, files prepared for Webfont use. Ideal use on the rational architecture.

Brandon Grotesque

Brandon Grotesque designed by  Hannes von Döhren  with the geometrical, sans-serif style from the early nineties. The lower width to height ratio of the font provides an elegant typeface for architectural presentations.

• Architectural Fonts
• architectural presentation
• Architectural Presentation Boards
• Fonts for Presentation
• jury presentation
• Portfolio fonts
• presentation boards

Elif Ayse Fidanci

human, architect, writer.

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