Presentation Tips: Killer Fonts for PowerPoint
First-class speakers, consultants, sales people all rely on their PowerPoint presentations to enhance the audience’s experience. In this session, I will share with you some of the key things about font usage and hopefully that can help you create a better PowerPoint presentation:
Font Size
This is the number one question we need to solve. We often have to balance between the amount of content we put in a PowerPoint slide and the readability of the materials. Management consultants tend to use small fonts to go along with a lot of numerical models and graphs, while key-note speakers like to use bigger fonts and lots of graphics.The rule of thumb I have learnt from a famous venture capitalist in UK is that we shouldn’t use a font size smaller than half the age of the oldest audience in the room. This rule of thumb might be a little bit too much but you rarely go wrong by following it. I personally would never use a font size that is lower than twenty-eight. Although there are always exceptions, if you ever need to put anything on your PowerPoint slide using a font size lower than twenty-eight, make sure you explain your content clearly or prepare a separate handout.
Match with the Brand Identity
I have taken a course on magazine publishing during my undergraduate study. One thing that has amazed me is that there are actually thousands of fonts out there and each has its own characteristics.When it comes to choosing the right fonts, I always suggest people to choose the ones that match with the brand identity. San-Serif fonts often give people the impression of modern and openness. Arial is one of the most popular San-Serif. You can never go wrong by choosing Arial. On the other hand, Serif fonts give people the impression of being more reliable and formal. Therefore, majority of listed companies’ annual reports use Serif fonts like Garamond.
The idea really is to choose the fonts that represent yourself and your company well.
Readable Font Type
Try not to choose those fonts that cannot be understood by your audience. Unless you are in the graphic design business or if you are doing it on purpose, choose a font type that can be easily read by your audience. There is no point to be fancy if you can’t get your points across.
