You’re doing a presentation, and the words are coming easily. But you have the uneasy feeling that your presentation doesn’t look quite right. Most likely, it’s because you aren’t crazy about the font. Unfortunately, you may be stuck with a template that’s mandated by your client’s style guide. If so, smile and suck it up.
If you can choose your font, great. Here are a few tips from Presentation God Scott Schwertly, who blogs for slideshare.net on just these topics.
A serif font has those little extender jobbies or, as Scott puts it, “small, projecting elements extending from the letters.” Think fonts like Times New Roman, Book Antiqua, or Palatino. And a sans serif font doesn’t have them, giving them a cleaner, more modern look. Think Arial, Calibri, and Verdana. I tend to like sans serif fonts better than serif fonts, but I’ve read someplace that if you’re doing a lot of reading, then you want a serif font. Not surprisingly, serif fonts tend to be associated with books, magazines, and the print media.
You can, of course, mix font styles. For example, you can do a header in sans serif and body text in a serif font:
How to Dance
- Put your right foot in
- Put your right foot out
- Put your right foot in and you shake it all about
- You do the hokey pokey…
OK, you get the idea.
Scott recommends using sans serif fonts if you’re emailing your presentation, sharing it online, or presenting it live. If you’re creating hard copy leave-behinds or using a small font, then go for serif. Not sure why size influences the type font you’d use, but I bow to his expertise.
Now for a little fun, check out this YouTube video from the California College of the Arts.
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