GRAPHICTIPS

About Using Fonts In Presentations

The font you choose will affect how your message is received. Choose a more serious font like Times New Roman for conservative audiences or serious messages; choose a "fun" font like Comic Sans MS for a lighthearted message.

Serif fonts — such as Times New Roman and Georgia — are easier to read for large amounts of text, but sans serif fonts — such as Arial and Verdana — are cleaner and tend to make better titles and headlines.

When designing for online or slide viewing, use fonts that look good online. The Verdana, Tahoma, and Georgia fonts are designed specifically for online viewing. Arial and Times New Roman also work well.

You should contrast font colors sharply with the background to ensure readability. Use bold and italic for emphasis only — heavy use diminishes their effectiveness.

Each font has a personality, so consistency is important. If you change fonts frequently, you might not be presenting a consistent message to your audience. Try to use no more than 3 to 4 different fonts in a presentation.

If you are going to show your presentation on a different computer, make sure you save the fonts — or embed them — in the presentation. See Make sure text displays correctly on another computer.

Make Sure Text Displays Correctly On Another Computer
When you create a presentation on a computer that uses one set of fonts, it might not look the same on another computer that has different fonts. To solve this problem, you can save the fonts — or embed them — in the presentation.

On the File menu, click Save As / Click Tools, and then click Embed TrueType Fonts.

Notes: You can embed any TrueType font that comes with Windows. Other TrueType fonts can be embedded only if they have no license restrictions. If a font can't be embedded — for example, it's not marked as being editable or installable — a message appears to tell you why.

Saving a presentation with embedded fonts increases the file size of your presentation.

 

PowerPoint 5-29-03