I hope this silly title caught your attention.
This post continues this month’s theme of better presentations. And here, we’re not talking about the words as much as how they appear on a PPT deck. As before, I’m curating the work of Scott Schwertly of Ethos 3, a presentation boutique based in Nashville.
First, though, I have a confession to make. Several years back, I did a post on serif vs. sans serif typography and expressed some dislike for Calibri. Now, I use Calibri all the time. Can’t get enough of it and likely will never go back to Arial, which I find unreadable. More on serif and sans serif in the next post.
OK, now on to what Scott has to say about how you can use typography to liven up your presentations. (). He’s presented five tips. I’m going for the three that clicked for me.
- Choose 2 fonts, max ‒ More is junky and confusing (my words).
- Go big ‒ What a great idea. Practically speaking, the bigger the font the less you can cram onto a slide.
- Keep it simple ‒ Find a font that’s easy to read. The best way to test this, in my opinion, is to ask folks who are representative of your audience. (Check out this You Tube video.)
So maybe you’re not a trained designer. In the words of Scott Schwertly: “Remember, typography is an art. You aren’t going to become a typography expert overnight but you can definitely start building some more engaging slides by understanding the rules.”
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