the best font for powerpoint presentation

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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. 

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!

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Presentations are pieces of art. From slide structure to animations, every single detail matters. In this blog post, we will show you the 24 best PowerPoint fonts for all uses. Of course, like everything in design – you might like some and frown at others.

What we can guarantee you is that using this collection of top fonts for PowerPoint will always be a safe bet when you’re in doubt.

Article Overview: 1. How to import a font into your presentation? 2. Great Fonts to Use for your PowerPoint Presentations 3. Great System fonts for PowerPoint Presentations 4. How to design text in PowerPoint?

1. How to import a font into your presentation?

If you don’t know how to import fonts into PowerPoint, it’s important to learn how to do it.

Step 1. Download your fonts

The first step is to select your desired font and download it.

Step 2. Extract the font

Once you’ve downloaded the font, it’s most probably compressed. You need to extract it before installation. If it comes directly as a .otf or .ttf format, there’s no need to unzip.

Step 3. Install the font

Install the font. The process is similar to installing any software, just press “Next” until you see the option “Finish”. If your fonts have been successfully installed, they should appear in the Font library in Windows. To access it, go to your computer, Local Disk (C:)->Windows-> Fonts .

Step 4. Open PowerPoint

Once you open your PowerPoint, the new font should appear among the others.

2. Great Fonts to Use for your PowerPoint Presentations

Fonts are a great way to show some branding skills but also a significant part of your presentation. Of course, we cannot select the best PowerPoint fonts or the best fonts in general, it’s a too subjective matter. But we will try to show you some of the most versatile ones that you will not make a mistake with. Let’s start!

Lato is a very common font that is used in digital forms since it was created for this purpose. It is a sans-serif font that is flexible. One of the most useful things about it is that you can choose between 5 different options for font thickness, giving it extra value when creating PowerPoint presentations.

Recommended title size:  20px

Optimum size for legibility:  18px

Perfect for:  headers and body text

You can combine it with: Roboto, Montserrat, Merriweather

2. Open Sans

Open Sans is another great font that can fit PowerPoint presentations perfectly. Since there is some line spacing, it can be easily readable. If you have large paragraphs that you cannot break down in bullets, it’s your perfect choice. It’s a standard PowerPoint font, so you’ll most probably have it in your font library.

Recommended title size: 28px

Optimum size for legibility:  16px

Perfect for:  body text

You can combine it with: Georgia, Lucida Grande, Publico

Candara is not your everyday font. While you cannot use it in Linux or the web, as it’s proprietary,  it’s accessible in PowerPoint, and what makes it interesting are the curved diagonals, and it’s the curves that give it more “personality”.

Recommended title size: 20px

Optimum size for legibility: 16px

Perfect for: body text

You can combine it with: Calibri, Cambria, Corbel

Specifically designed for Windows 95, Tahoma is a very formal font that can fit business presentations perfectly. It is a very clear and distinctive font which can help avoid confusion, thus it makes it great for formal presentations that need clarity.

Optimum size for legibility: 18px

Perfect for: title headers and body text

You can combine it with:  Georgia, Helvetica Neue, Arial

5. Montserrat

Montserrat is an extremely popular font, as it can be utilized everywhere – from website texts to presentations. Due to its high practicality, you can find it almost anywhere. Well, we need to warn you that you won’t get many “originality” points but you’ll also be “safe” when using it.

Recommended title size: 30px

You can combine it with: Open Sans, Lora, Carla

Whitney is an amazing font that will make your presentation stand out. There are two options – Whitney Condensed and Whitney Narrow. To be honest, Whitney can be used for both headers and body texts (check Discord), but we find it a bit overwhelming for PowerPoint paragraphs.

Recommended title size: 22px

Optimum size for legibility: 15px

Perfect for: title headers

You can combine it with:  Sentinel, Mercury, Gotham

7. Proxima Nova

Proxima Nova is one of the most versatile fonts out there with not 2 but 7 variants! That makes it a viable choice for many purposes and it’s part of the Adobe Fonts collection. The popularity spike is not without a reason, and Proxima Nova certainly won’t disappoint as it is one of the better fonts for PowerPoint.

Recommended title size: 26px

Perfect for: headers and body text

You can combine it with:  Adobe Garamond, Futura, Helvetica Neue

Oswald is a very decent sans-serif typeface and has 3 different versions – light, normal, and bold. It’s an interesting combination of some modern elements combined with classic gothic style, thus it’s perfect for your presentations.

Recommended title size: 18px

You can combine it with: Merriweather, Arial, Roboto

Europa is an amazing font from the Adobe Font Family. It’s a modern geometric sans-serif font that goes well with other fonts from the Adobe family but it can be used in a combination with non-Adobe fonts. It’s up to you.

Recommended title size: 32px

Optimum size for legibility: 20px

Perfect for: headers

You can combine it with:  Adobe Garamond, Chaparral, Kepler

Roboto is one of the most versatile fonts for the web, as it comes with 6 variations. Described as a grotesque sans-serif, it is the default font of Google Maps. Being easy to read makes it great for body texts where scanning is pivotal. While it’s great for small texts, it doesn’t perform that well for titles.

Recommended title size: 38px

Optimum size for legibility: 22px

You can combine it with: Roboto-Slab, Oswald, Abel

Adelle is a slab serif font that is part of the Adobe Family. It’s multipurpose and could work be well utilized and magazines. Its personality and great visibility make it a viable choice on our PowerPoint fonts list. While it can be used for body text too, we prefer to recommend it for headers.

Recommended title size: 36px

You can combine it with: Freight Sans Pro, Proxima Nova, Lucida Grande

14. Lobster

Lobster is a great choice if you want to create some funky text. It’s a great font for posters and headers but ensure you don’t use it much for body text, as it has very poor legibility if written in small letters.

Recommended title size: 58px

Optimum size for legibility: not recommended

You can combine it with: Lato, Open Sans, Muli

Futura is almost a century old but still converts well today! It’s one of the most versatile fonts for PowerPoint in case you download it. Who would suppose a 95-year-old font would still be relevant these days? And you will win points for creativity.

Optimum size for legibility: 17px

You can combine it with: Proxima Nova, New Caledonia, Trade Gothic

Canela is a hybrid font, as it can neither be called serif, nor sans-serif. It’s a very graceful typeface and we find it amazing for title texts. We also loved how it performs in the body from an artistic standpoint. However, we cannot rate it as very suitable for long paragraphs. Still, it can be used in bullets quite well.

You can combine it with: Caslon, Futura, Maison Neue

Aleo is an modern slab serif typeface designed as a “companion” to other popular fonts, like Lato. It has a sleek design but that doesn’t sacrifice readability which matters the most. As it has great clarity, it can be used both as a title text and in the body.

Recommended title size: 25px

Optimum size for legibility: 19px

You can combine it with: Lato, Arimo, Halis Grotesque

18. Poppins

Poppins is a playful sans-serif font that can be used as a main PowerPoint font without any issue. Thanks to its versatility, this PowerPoint font can be used both for title headers and body text, although we prefer the latter.

Recommended title size: 24px

Perfect for: header, body text

You can combine it with: Raleway, Work Sans, New Caledonia

Eras font has 4 weight options in PowerPoint and is absolutely stunning. It won’t be a mistake if we use it as a synonym to “elegance”. It’s slightly italic, thus making it perfect for long paragraphs and web content.

You can combine it with: Garamond, Futura, Helvetica Neue

Lora is a great font that is offered for free by Google. It is a formal font that doesn’t turn its back on art, and as a result, it can be utilized greatly in PowerPoint both as a header and in the body, and it can work perfectly in print, too.

You can combine it with: Lato, Avenir, Montserrat

3. Great System fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

System fonts are a classic choice for PowerPoint presentations as they are a pretty safe bet – you can access them on all types of devices and operating systems. While some of them might not be as beautiful as the previous ones on our list, they will serve you well!

21. Georgia

Georgia is a classic serif font that doesn’t impress with outstanding looks but what makes it a viable choice for PowerPoint presentations is its versatility – you can use it on any type of presentation, as a header or in the body. It’s popular, so you won’t make a mistake using it.

You can combine it with:

22. Times New Roman

Times New Roman was “The Thing” back in time. It was used as a default font for many web browsers and software, thus it was overwhelming. Recently, this serif font has lost its “halo” and is less common but you will never get it wrong if you bring it back to life.

Optimum size for legibility: 12px

You can combine it with: Arial, Gotham, Helvetica Neue

Arial is another well-known name in the web font industry. You can also check this neo-grotesque sans-serif font used in PowerPoint presentations quite often, as it offers a lot of versatility.

You can combine it with: Oswald, Verdana, Georgia

24. Helvetica Neue

Helvetica Neue is the successor of Helvetica which improved legibility and made it more modern. It is one of the most formal fonts that you can use in PowerPoint (and at all). This sans-serif font has 23 different variations in PowerPoint 2022 that you can choose from.

You can combine it with:  Open Sans, Proxima Nova, Adelle

4. How to design text in PowerPoint?

There are certain standards that should be met, in order for your PowerPoint fonts to appear correctly. Let’s see how to order your texts.

1. Make sure the font size is readable

Do you wonder why some websites have HUGE fonts? It’s to ensure their content will be easily scannable. While you don’t have to use a 60px font size for your letters, you should consider making your text more readable.

Pro tip : A simple and straightforward way to achieve this is to try and remove large paragraphs, and replace them with single sentences and bullet points.

2. Make a contrast between the text and background

There is an adopted standard of a minimum 4.5:1 contrast ratio between text and background for content to be scannable, and 3:1 for large text. There are people who have bad eyesight, and others are color blind.

3. Use white space

White space (or negative space) is crucial for your slide design. It is used to separate different parts of the text, making content more readable. It’s crucial to remember that you should leave some “air” after finishing a main point in the slide.

4. Find the right text balance

One of the best PowerPoint presentation practices is to write between 6-8 lines and use no more than 30-35 words. Also, you should try to balance the text evenly – you cannot write 4 lines, then follow them with 3 lines, and then 1. Typically, writing 2-3 lines per paragraph is considered a good move, then followed by white space.

Final words

Structuring your PowerPoint text is not an easy feat. You need to pick the right PowerPoint fonts, as well as follow some basic instructions to make your slide text more scannable for your audience.

If this article has helped you, why don’t you have a look at some other font-related content from GraphicMama:

• 40 Trendy Free Fonts for Commercial Use Today
• Top 20 Free Fonts: Trendy & Evergreen
• 44 of The Best Free Handwriting Fonts to Try in 2022

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Microsoft 365 Life Hacks > Presentations > Choosing the Right Font For Your PowerPoint Presentation

Choosing the Right Font For Your PowerPoint Presentation

Whether it’s for a professional conference or middle school book report, it’s important to know the best font to use for your PowerPoint presentation . Believe it or not, fonts are a big part of the overall design of your presentation —and they can make a world of difference! Some convey a lighthearted message, while others can show authority, and so on.

In this guide, we’ll take a closer look at:

• The different styles of fonts
• The 5 most popular fonts
• How to embed fonts, and more.

What are the different styles of fonts? Before we get too deep into each font and what looks best, let’s examine font styles and how they’re classified.

• Sans-serif fonts. Most serif fonts are easy to identify because of the tiny flags or projections on the ends of the characters. Serifs make distinguishing a lowercase L from a capital I in print easy.
• Serif fonts. Sans-serif fonts are commonly used in digital media because serifs can make letters difficult to see if an image or screen is low-resolution.
• Script fonts. Script fonts are also known as handwritten fonts because of the looping letters that make them look like cursive or calligraphy. Most people find it difficult to read more than a few sentences in a script font, so they’re best limited to a few words or a single phrase.
• Monospaced fonts. Even when writing by hand, you’ll notice that not all letters take up the same amount of space. Monospaced fonts buck this trend by allotting the same amount of space laterally for all letters, similar to a typewriter.
• Display fonts. Display fonts can also be known as fantasy or decorative fonts. These aren’t typically used for anything besides signage, banners, logos, or other text that’s isolated. Using display fonts for multiple sentences or a full paragraph isn’t a good practice because they can be hard to read or off-putting after a while.

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What are the 5 most popular fonts in presentations and why? A common theme you’ll notice when looking at the best fonts for PowerPoint is that they’re traditionally sans-serif fonts. Why? Well, this style is much easier to read from a distance and won’t feel cramped if letters are bolded. Additionally, the minimalistic style of sans-serif fonts isn’t distracting from the material or the speaker. Let’s look at five fonts that fit the best practices for a winning presentation .

Note: You’ll notice a serif font on this list, but we’ll address it when we get there.

• Roboto. Roboto is a sans-serif font that’s relatively basic, with sharp edges and rounded loops, counters, and bowls (the rounded parts of letters) without going overly bold or too thin. You can be safe using Roboto for just about any presentation.
• Verdana. Despite the font size you choose, not all fonts display the same. Verdana is a larger sans-serif font that can make it easier to display information without taking your font up an extra size.
• Helvetica. A point of differentiation between Helvetica and other sans-serif fonts is the weight toward the top of the letters. The top of every lowercase letter and the midpoint of every capital letter go to a thick midline’s upper edge. For instance, the top of every lowercase letter reaches the same horizontal point as the top of the crossbar on an H. This unique feature makes the Helvetica type look larger and bolder than it really is, which makes it great for headings and titles.
• Tahoma. Tahoma is different from the previous sans-serif fonts in that it is thinner than the others. While Tahoma might not have the same impact for a heading or title as Helvetica, it’s perfect for body text and fitting into smaller spaces without crowding.
• Palatino Linotype. Serif fonts have long been considered a no-no with digital publications, but with the advent of high-resolution computer monitors, tablets, smartphones, and TVs, they’re fine. What’s more, the serifs on Palatino Linotype aren’t incredibly prominent, so they make for a subtle nod to old-style fonts without over-embellishing.

How do you embed fonts in PowerPoint ? If you’re sharing your presentation with a friend, classmate, or colleague, you could be at risk of the fonts you used transferring properly to their device. For example, if you have a font you love using and installed it onto your computer, they might not have the same font. So, if you send your presentation to them, there could be formatting errors as their device defaults to a different font. Keep this from happening by embedding your font in PowerPoint using these easy steps:

• Click the “File” tab.
• Move down to the lower-lefthand corner of the window and click “Options.”
• Click “Save” on the left side of the screen.
• Scroll down to the section titled “Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation:”
• Click the box next to “Embed fonts in the file.”
• If you or someone else will be using the presentation on a different device, then select the first option, “Embed only the characters used in the presentation (best for reducing file size).” If you or someone else will be editing the presentation on a different device, then select the second option, “Embed all characters (best for editing by other people).”
• Click “OK.”

There you have it! Choosing the best font for PowerPoint doesn’t have to be difficult. The most important part is making sure that the font is easy to read, and sans-serif fonts are usually a good way to go. By the way, it’s always a good idea to get a second set of eyes on your presentation before your big speech—and be sure to practice it a few times to iron out the kinks !

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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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Config – Complete Font Family (40 Fonts)

Unlike most other font families, Config is a complete font family made just for professional designers and creatives. This font family comes with a total of 40 fonts.

Config includes 40 fonts in 8 different styles and in 10 weights. You also get italics, ligatures, alternatives, and much more with this font pack.

Why This Is A Top Pick

This is truly a special font pack that will help you design not only professional presentations but also many other types of print and digital designs. With 40 fonts, you’ll have plenty of options to choose from.

Devant Horgen – Modern Font for PowerPoint

This is one of the best fonts for presentations that features a tall and bold letter design that’s simply perfect for crafting titles for your slides. The font also comes in two different styles featuring glyphs, multilingual support, and web fonts.

Jungle East – Font For PowerPoint Titles

The quirky and simple design of this font makes it a great choice for PowerPoint presentations. It’s especially ideal for presentations about casual and lifestyle topics. The font features all-caps letters with lots of creative alternate characters.

Lost Signal – Font Duo for PowerPoint

With this font, you get a two-in-one deal as it comes with two unique fonts. It includes a regular font and an outline version that you can pair to craft attractive titles and designs for your presentations and various other projects.

Apple Juice – Fun Font for Presentations

Apple Juice is a fun font that will fit in great with presentations related to kids, education, schools, and more. It features uppercase and lowercase characters along with multilingual support.

Vistol Black – Free Font for Presentations

Vistol Black is a free font that comes with a very clean and professional letter design. It’s great for all your business and corporate presentations, especially for designing titles that grab attention.

Meribold – Modern Font for Presentations

This font has one of the coolest-looking letter designs that will make your titles and headings look extra sharp on presentation slideshows. It has bold letters with thick strokes to instantly grab your audience’s attention.

PlainScribe – Clean Font for PowerPoint

This font comes in two different styles featuring a regular and outline version, along with italics for both fonts. You can combine these two fonts to create attractive titles and text for PowerPoint presentations.

Handcraft Chalk Font for Presentations

If you’re going with a chalkboard-style handcrafted look for the presentations, then this font is a must-have for your project. It has a chalk-style letter design with a set of all-caps characters.

BRIGHTONS – Bold Title Font for PowerPoint

Brightons is a bold title font family that includes 16 different fonts with different weights. It’s a fantastic choice for designing big headings and titles for your PowerPoint slides that stand out.

Open Runde – Free Sans Font for PowerPoint

This free font has a very casual and clean letter design featuring rounded edges and beautifully smooth characters. You can use it to craft both titles and paragraphs for presentations. And it’s free to use with commercial projects.

Leading – Bold Sans Serif Font for PowerPoint

Leading is a modern sans-serif font that features a set of clean and thick letters. The font is perfect for adding attention-grabbing titles to your slideshows and presentations.

Chalk Brush – Creative Font for Presentations

This font combines two different styles of fonts to create a unique look. It takes elements from brush and chalk-style fonts to offer a unique handwritten letter design, which you can add to your own PowerPoint presentations.

Milkyway – Playful Font for PowerPoint

The retro and groovy design of this font will make any presentation stand out from the crowd. It features a fun and playful letter design that is ideal for all your PowerPoint slideshows related to casual and entertaining topics.

Sans Block – Handwritten Font for PowerPoint

If you’re looking for a font with a more personalized handwritten look, then this font is perfect for your presentations. It features a thin and minimalist letter design that’s especially suitable for school and educational slideshow designs.

RL Madena – Free Font for Presentations

This font is also free to download and it comes with an elegant serif letter design. It will make your typography look extra stylish in fashion and lifestyle-related presentations. The font is free for commercial use.

San Marino – Urban Font Family for Presentations

San Marino is another professional font that features clean-cut geometric letters. This font comes in 4 styles for you to choose from. And it’s suitable for business, lifestyle, and creative PowerPoint slideshow designs.

Kod Hulling – Rounded Fonts for PowerPoint

Want to add a casual and friendly look to your presentation slides? Then use this font to craft your slides with a classic look. The font comes with a very unique design featuring both uppercase and lowercase letters.

Miracle World – Elegant Font for Presentations

This font has the perfect design for crafting titles in presentations for luxury businesses and elegant lifestyle brands. It includes lots of stylistic characters and ligatures to help you design unique titles and designs for your slideshows.

Action Hero – Brush Font for PowerPoint Titles

With this brush font, you can design attention-grabbing titles for your fun and casual presentations. It has an 80’s action movie-themed letter design that comes with a set of cool all-caps letters. And with lots of alternate characters.

Quanty – Free Modern Font for PowerPoint

This free font is also great for designing titles in your PowerPoint slides. It has a simple and clean letter design that will add an extra-professional look to your presentation. The font is free to use with personal projects.

Indigo – Chunky Font Duo

Indigo is a modern and creative font that features a bold and thick character design. This font is ideal for designing titles and the headers of your presentations. It comes in both regular and outline styles.

Maximum Profit – Business Presentation Font

If you’re creating a business explainer PowerPoint presentation, Maximum Profit will help you hit a home run. It comes with a full set of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation, multilingual support, and more. Try it out today!

Mosra – PowerPoint Presentation Font

Looking for a typeface that feels right at home on virtually any kind of PowerPoint presentation? Mosra is a solid font choice that will help you create a presentation that stands out from the pack. We recommend you choose Mosra for your upcoming pitch deck or add it to your shortlist at the very least.

Cornerone – Corporate Presentation Font

Say hello to Cornerone, a simple, round typeface that will add a vintage flair to your presentation, and take it to a whole new level. Available in bold and regular styles, and cyrillic, and latin alphabets, Cornerone provides a surprising amount of creative control in your hands.

Cholens – Free Sans-serif Font

Modern, and classy, Cholens is a rounded sans-serif font that can be a solid choice for PowerPoint presentations of any kind. It contains uppercase and lowercase letters and is available for you to download without spending a penny. Get it now.

Mike Sans – Square Font

Mike Sans is a sans-serif font family that features a unique square and slightly rounded character design. The font includes 8 weights ranging from thin to heavy. It’s ideal for both title and paragraph text designs of presentations.

Metropolis – Font Family

Metropolis is an elegant serif font family that comes with a mix of modern and vintage design elements. It features a design inspired by the 1927 Fritz Lang movie of the same name. This font is perfect for crafting business and professional presentation slideshows.

RNS Miles – Geometric Sans Font

RNS Miles is a modern sans-serif font featuring an attractive design. It’s been crafted with a combination of “geometric shapes, open forms, and grotesque mood”, which gives the font a unique look. The font includes 7 different weights with 7 italic versions of the font.

CA Texteron – Six Weight Text Font

Texteron is a professional font that comes in 6 different weights, including bold, heavy, and small caps font styles. The font features an elegant design that makes it perfect for designing the paragraph text of your PowerPoint slides.

Peace Sans – Free Presentation Font

Peace Sans is a bold display font with thick character design. This font is most suitable for designing titles and headers of your presentations. It’s free to use with your personal projects.

Univia Pro – Free Font Family

Univia Pro is a family of sans-serif fonts that features multiple font weights ranging from thick to bold designs. You can use it to design both titles and body text of your presentations.

Italo – Creative Font

Italo is a creative sans-serif handwritten font that comes with a unique design. It’s most suitable for designing PowerPoint slides for entertaining, fun, and creative presentations. The font also includes lots of glyphs and alternate characters as well.

Brother Typeface

Brother is a yet another creative font that comes with a bold design, making it best for using to design the titles of your slides. The font comes with both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuations.

Vistol – Free Sans Serif Font Family

Vistol is a free font family that features a set of clean and minimalist sans serif characters. The font includes 9 different font weights ranging from thin to extra bold and black.

This font is ideal for designing both titles and body text of your presentations as it includes both uppercase and lowercase letters.

The simple and attractive character design gives this font family a special place on our list. It’s also completely free to use with your personal and commercial projects.

Cansu – Free PowerPoint Font

While you’ll find a number of freebies on our list, when it comes to choosing the one that we like the most, Cansu definitely takes the cake. With an air of minimalism, the font is perfectly suited for a variety of presentation formats.

Addington CF – Serif Font Family

Addington is a family of serif fonts that feature a very formal design. It’s perfect for designing PowerPoint slides for business and professional presentations. The font comes with 7 different font weights including roman and italic sets.

Avera Sans – Font Family

Avera is a unique family of sans-serif fonts that comes in 3 different styles, a brush font, a handcrafted style font, and a sketch style font. This font family will come in handy when designing many different types of slideshow presentations.

Calama – Free Condensed Font

Calama is a free font that comes with a narrow condensed design. This type of fonts is best not to be used as your body text font. But it will make your titles look great.

Mathison – Free Modern Display Font

Mathison is a free serif font that has a unique design of its own. This font is perfect for crafting unique headers and sub-headers in your presentations. It’s free to use with personal and commercial projects.

Cormier – Art Deco Font

Cormier is a creative font that comes with an art deco inspired design. It includes 3 styles of fonts: Rough, Double, and Regular. The font features all-uppercase letters, numbers, and punctuations.

Metrisch – Sans-Serif Font Family

Metrisch is a minimalist sans-serif font that features an elegant design. The font comes in 7 different weights to match both the titles and text in your slides. It’s most suitable for making slides related to business and professional projects.

Frank – Modern Font Family

Frank is a bold font that comes with a modern design. It includes 4 different fonts, including oblique and rough styles. And the fonts are available in 5 different weights, making a total of 20 fonts.

Bistro – Handcrafted Font

Bistro is a creative font with a handcrafted design. This font is perfect for designing slides related to creative work, kids, school presentations, and more. It comes with 3 different weights and in both serif and sans-serif versions.

Hunky Dory – Fun Bold Font

This cute and adorable font features a fun and quirky design that makes it most suitable for designing presentations related to fun events. It will especially help get the attention of children.

Mosk – Free Clean Sans-Serif Font

Mosk is a modern sans-serif font family that comes with 9 different font weights. You can use this free font to design both titles and paragraphs of your PowerPoint presentations.

Manrope – Free Geometric Sans-Serif Font

Manrope is a unique sans-serif font that comes with 7 different weights. It features a geometrically accurate design that makes it perfect for all kinds of business and professional presentations.

Venice Serif – Font Family

Venice is a serif font with an elegantly thin design. The font comes in multiple weights, including light, bold, and italic versions. It also includes 195 glyphs and it’s best for fashion and luxury presentation designs.

Granite – Modern Brush Font

Granite is a creative brush style font you can use to design bold and creative PowerPoint slides. The font includes lots of swashes and glyphs. It’s perfect for slides with colorful images and graphics.

Bison – Bold Font Family

Bison is a bold font family that comes with several unique font styles, including regular and outline versions of the font. It also features italics, numbers, and punctuations as well.

Frosty – Modern Typeface

Frosty is a creative font you can use to design the titles of fun and attractive slides. The font features a quirky design that will work well with colorful and minimalist PowerPoint presentations.

Hobart – Minimal Typeface

This sans-serif font is ideal for designing creative and business slideshow presentations. The font features a design inspired by a font released in the 20th Century and it comes in 3 different weights.

4 Tips for Choosing a Presentation Font

If you’re new to creating presentations, follow these tips to find the best font for your design.

1. Choose Fonts That Improve Readability

Most PowerPoint presentations include two different types of text titles or headings and paragraph text. When designing both types of text, you need to take readability into account.

Where are you presenting your slideshow? Will it be at a big conference for a big crowd? Or a small team meeting at the office? Depending on the situation, choose a font and a font size appropriately. For example, if you’re presenting the slideshow to a crowd at a large hall, you may want to use an easy to read sans-serif font with larger font size for paragraph text to let people in every corner read the text more easily.

2. Use No More Than Two Fonts

It’s best to use two different fonts for your titles and paragraph text. But, avoid using more than two fonts. Some people actually use one font for titles, one for bullet points, one for paragraphs, and another for sub-headings. This is a mistake that only creates confusion and destroys professionalism.

Use two matching font pairs for titles and paragraphs, preferably sans-serif fonts.

3. Keep Consistency

One of the biggest mistakes people make when using fonts in presentations is choosing different font styles that ruin readability. For example, using a script font for paragraphs is a terrible choice.

When choosing different fonts, also remember to keep consistency. Don’t use different fonts for each and every slide in your presentation.

4. Avoid Using All-Caps Fonts

Some fonts only include uppercase letters and doesn’t come with lowercase letters. When choosing a font, remember to check whether your font includes both sets of letters.

While all-caps text is suitable for designing titles and headings, it’s not a good choice for body text. You should try to avoid using all-caps fonts altogether especially when designing professional and business presentations.

Home Blog Design 20 Best PowerPoint Fonts to Make Your Presentation Stand Out in 2024

20 Best PowerPoint Fonts to Make Your Presentation Stand Out in 2024

What makes or kills a first impression during any presentation is your usage of typefaces in the slide design. There are common sins that we should avoid at all costs, but mostly, there are tactics we can learn to feel confident about designing presentation slides for success.

In this article, we shall discuss what makes a quality typeface to use in presentation slides, the difference between fonts and typefaces (two terms mistakenly used interchangeably), and several other notions pertinent to graphic design in an easy-to-approach format for non-designers. At the end, you will have a better idea of which are the best fonts to use for presentations. Let’s get started.

Table of Contents

Font vs. Typeface: What’s the difference?

Serif vs. sans serif, 6 elements you should consider when picking a typeface for presentation design, how to install a font in powerpoint.

• 20 Best PowerPoint Fonts

10 Best PowerPoint Fonts combinations for presentations

Considerations before presenting or printing a slide regarding typefaces, recommended font pairing tools & other resources, closing thoughts.

Most people are familiar with the term font , but what if we tell you it is wrongly used and you intend to say another word? Let’s start by defining each term.

A typeface is a compendium of design elements that set the style of any lettering medium. The misconception comes as the typeface is the set of rules that form a family in style, and the font is the implementation of those rules in practical elements. How so? Well, a font is part of a typeface family and can list variations , i.e., light, regular, bold, heavy, etc. 

Putting it into simpler terms, a font is part of a typeface, and typefaces are set to classes depending on their graphical elements. That categorization stands as:

• Blackletter

Up to this point, you may ask yourself: what is the whole point of the serif? Well, there’s a little bit of story behind it. Back in the old days, when writings were made in stone, engravers added extra glyphs at the end of each letter, as a consequence of the chisel mark. In 1465, with the development of the type printing press by Johannes Gutenberg , the Gothic’s overly-ornamented Blackletter style – used mostly for ecclesiastical purposes – was the go-to typeface to use as it mimicked the formal handwriting style. There was a problem, though, and it arose as such typefaces required lengthy space to produce a book, increasing printing costs. This is where the first pure serif types started to emerge, but readability remained a problem; especially when Renaissance’s calligraphy style didn’t offer an alternative.

These concepts were revised by the 18th century when a pursuit for aesthetics gave birth to newer, slim versions of the serif script. By 1757, John Baskerville introduced what we now know as Transitional typefaces, intended as a refinement to increase legibility. The end of the 18th century saw the inception of modern serif typefaces, which came from the hand of designers Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni. Their work altered the appearance of standard serif typefaces to make the metal engraving process a high-quality process. This is what we now know as the Didone typeface family. 

19th century introduced the slab serifs , also known as Egyptian, which changed communication media as large-scale advertisement quickly adopted this style. In case you wonder if you ever saw this style, remember the large bold letters that newspapers used for headings. The evolution of this typeface style came in 1816, with William Caslon’s “ Caslon Egyptian ” style, or the two-lines style. This is the very first sans serif typeface ever recorded, and its continuity in style or alterations saw a massive process during the 20th century.

It is quite the process that led to what we now know as sans serif typefaces, and such a road was paved for the sake of legibility and style. Nowadays, there’s little doubt about these two typeface families as you can easily identify iconic styles such as “Times New Roman” and clearly differentiate them from sans serif families like “Arial.” In the graphic below, you can appreciate the glyphs that distinctively give the serif typefaces their style.

Moving on to the parts that pique our interest as presenters, you should consider some implicit rules before starting a PowerPoint design. 

Functionality

Let’s be hyper-clear on this point: not every typeface works for your intended purpose. Legibility should be your primal focus, way more than design, as what’s the point of using a cool-looking typeface if no one can get a clue of what’s written? 

Functionality refers to the usage of a typeface at different sizes across a document. Do you ever wonder why you see the same typeface on eye testing boards? Usually is a slab serif, with its sans serif alternative, and the same font is repeated, downscaling its size to test your visual acuity. If, said typeface, had “catchy” glyphs, you would require twice as much time actually to read the type below the average 24pt in a board.

Language support

This is a common, and painful, pitfall many non-English speakers do. They fall in love with a typeface after browsing an English-based website, but whenever they apply it to a personal project, they find they cannot use their average characters. Which characters are those?

• Ø – in Nordic languages.
• Ö – also known as umlaut in German, is commonly used in Turkish, Nordic, and Baltic languages.
• Á – the acute accent used in most Latin-based languages such as Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and French.
• Ô – the circumflex, mostly used by Portuguese-speaking users but also French.
• Ç – the cedilla, used in Portuguese, French, Catalán, and Turkish (the ? character, for example).
• Ã – the tilde, common in Portuguese.

And those are just some examples extracted from the Latin alphabet. The problem even worsens if we intend to use Cyrillic, Greek, Hindi, or other Asiatic alphabets (which don’t fall into Chinese, Japanese, or Korean typical logographic style). For this reason, we emphasize testing the characters you will mostly use throughout a standard written text, just not to come across nasty surprises.

Some font families offer support for multi-language applications across the same alphabet. Others, restrict their compatibility in terms of certain characters (i.e., the acute accent in Spanish), but sometimes, that renders as a distorted character that looks awful at any written copy.

Multiple weights

We want to expose this point by first explaining what weight means for a font family. As previously mentioned, fonts are part of a typeface; they are their implementation in terms of style. Well, fonts include variations within the same specific family style that makes the text look thinner or bolder. That’s known as font weight and can be classified in two ways.

Name classification:

• Thin Italic
• Medium Italic
• Semibold (also known as Demi Bold)
• Semibold Italic
• Bold Italic
• Heavy (also known as Black)
• Heavy Italic

Web designers and graphic designers often use a number-based scale, which is inherited from CSS.

• 100 – Thin
• 200 – Extra Light
• 300 – Light
• 400 – Normal or Regular
• 500 – Medium
• 600 – Semibold
• 700 – Bold
• 800 – Extra Bold
• 900 – Black

Now you know the reason why some places like Google Fonts often show numbers next to the name definition of it.

Not every typeface can be used for any project. Some typefaces can be acquired for a fee through sites like MyFonts.com , but their usage does not allow commercial use. What exactly does this mean?

Let’s say you created a product, and you love the Coca-Cola lettering style. Well, you want to use the Coca-Cola typeface, which is trademarked, as the typeface for your logo. Everything sounds fantastic until your designer warns you that it’s impossible.

Brands that create typefaces for their logos, which is a common practice to deliver the originality factor into the brand, restrict the usage of their intellectual property for commercial use as they don’t want to be associated with the wrong kind of message. Okay then, what happens when a kid uses those typefaces on a school project? This writer sincerely doubts a company shall put their legal team to prosecute a student; most likely, they feel it is part of their brand awareness and cultural influence. That same argument won’t be used if a particular is intending to use the typeface to make a profit with a non-branded product, and you will be legally requested to ditch the design altogether. 

Therefore, before opting for a typeface, don’t fall prey to using a fancy, trademarked, typeface. 

The unknown-typeface strikes again

This is another common pitfall if you attend multiple presentations or if you work in the printing business. How often does a user feel annoyed that the presentation “looked different” at home? Fonts are the culprit for this.

Whenever you work on a presentation using local-based software, like PowerPoint, the typefaces you pick are the ones installed on your computer. Therefore, if you change devices, the typefaces won’t be available. We will retake this topic later, but consider always working with well-known typefaces available on any computer rather than innovation.

Sins of type

Finally, we want to conclude this section with the vices you should avoid at all costs whenever working with type in presentations. 

• Using multiple typefaces on the same document: As a rule, don’t use more than 3 typefaces across your presentation slides design. Increasing the number of typefaces won’t make it more appealing; quite the opposite, and you should be mindful that if your images contain text, they have to match the existing typefaces in the presentation. 
• DO NOT use Comic Sans: By all means, do yourself a favor. There are multiple reasons why designers feel like having a stroke whenever Comic Sans enters the scene, but if you want a straightforward reason why, it makes your work look childish, unprofessional, and unfit for its purpose.
• Script fonts for the body of text : Legible typefaces are required in long text areas to make the reader feel comfortable. Script fonts are not intended for readability but for design purposes. If your text is long, work with serif or sans serif typefaces (slab serif won’t do good as well).
• Excess tracking : Tracking refers in typography to the space between words, and the perfect way to point this out is by referring to the Justify paragraph alienation, which often leaves heavy white areas between words. Excess tracking makes the text look boring and hard to read.

Installing a font in PowerPoint doesn’t mean installing it as a third-party plugin; you must install the font family into the operating system (OS). 

Installing a font in Windows

Method 1 – Via Contextual Menu

• Download your desired font family. Extract the zip file you obtain.
• Right-click the font files you obtain from the zip (they can be in OpenType or TrueType format). Click on Install on the contextual menu. 
• You will be prompted to give admin rights to make changes to your computer. If you trust the source, then click yes. 

Method 2 – Via C: Drive

• Open a new File Explorer window. Search this path: C:\Windows\Fonts. That’s where fonts are stored in any Windows OS. 
• Copy the files from your extracted zip file or folder containing fonts.
• Paste the fonts by right-clicking inside the Fonts folder, then click Paste .

Relaunch the opened applications to see the effects of installing a font.

Installing a font on Mac

Mac OS requires a different procedure for installing fonts. First, access the Font Book app. 

After launching Font Book, go to File > Add Fonts to Current User . Double-click the font file. 

The Font Book app validates the integrity of the font file and if there are duplicate fonts. For more detailed instructions and troubleshooting on Mac font install procedures, check this guide by Apple .

20 Best Fonts for PowerPoint

Now it’s time to explore what you’ve been looking for: the best fonts for PowerPoint! This is a list of typefaces intended for multiple uses in slides, and it will certainly boost your PowerPoint design ideas for the greater.

#1 – Tahoma Font

This typeface is typically used in PowerPoint slides, emails, Word documents, and more. It resembles Verdana but with a smaller kerning (distance between characters). Due to that, it feels slimmer, professional and works perfectly on multiple devices. This is one of the best fonts for presentation that you can consider to use.

Recommended font pairing: Georgia, Brandon Grotesque, Helvetica Neue, Palatino, Arial.

#2 – Verdana Font

Verdana is a sans serif classic commonly used for citations, disclaimers, and academic documents. It is available on both Windows and Mac as a pre-installed font, which would solve your problems if you have to deliver presentations on multiple devices (which may not be yours).

Recommended font pairing: Arial, Lucida Grande, Futura, Georgia.

#3 – Roboto

Another delicate sans serif font that is ideal for text bodies. It is rated among the best fonts for PowerPoint readability and presentations, so you can easily pair it with more prominent font families. You may recognize this typeface as it is the default Google Maps uses.

Recommended font pairing: Oswald, Gill Sans, Garamond, Open Sans, Teko, Crimson Text.

#4 – Rockwell

Including visually attractive elements is crucial when looking for the best fonts for presentations, so why not combine a professional style with a slab serif typeface like Rockwell?

It is ideal for headings, especially if used in its bold font weight and paired with a sans serif for the body.

Recommended font pairing: Helvetica Neue, Gill Sans, Futura, DIN Mittelschrift.

#5 – Open Sans

This is easily one of the most versatile sans-serif fonts you can find! It is commonly used in presentation slides as both heading and body, varying font-weight, but you can also create powerful combinations with different typefaces.

Recommended font pairing: Roboto, Brandon Grotesque, Montserrat, Oswald, Lora, Raleway.

#6 – Lato

A typeface intended for digital mediums, one of its biggest advantages is its wide range of font weights – much like Open Sans. It is ideal for headings in minimalistic-themed presentations, but it can work perfectly as body text if paired with a serif font or a script one.

Recommended font pairing: Montserrat, Oswald, Roboto, Merriweather.

#7 – Futura

This sans serif typeface was designed by Paul Renner in 1927 and remains a preferred choice of designers thanks to its clean aspect with pure geometric shapes. It has inspiration from the Bauhaus in terms of styling, so any presenter that loves modern style will find in this typeface a loyal companion.

Recommended font pairing: Playfair Display, Lato, Book Antiqua, Helvetica, Open Sans.

#8 – Book Antiqua

A typeface widely used in the first years of the 2000s, its graphical elements are inspired by Renaissance’s handwritten style. Created in 1991 by The Monotype Corporation, it is known as a classic in design projects and won’t run out of fashion any time soon. Its italic variation is considered one of the most beautiful italic serif fonts.

Recommended font pairing: Myriad Pro, Baskerville, Georgia, Futura, Vladimir Script.

#9 – Bebas Neue

This typeface is strictly intended for headings or for body copy that doesn’t mind the usage of caps. The reason is that this typeface is entirely made of caps. It has no lowercase characters, but its slender shape and tight kerning have made it a popular choice among well-known designers like Chris Do. One creative usage of this typeface is to use it in outline format.

Recommended font pairing: Avenir, Montserrat, DIN Mittelschrift, Roboto.

#10 – Lora

This serif typeface can be used both in PowerPoint and Google Slides, as it is a free typeface offered by Google. Works perfectly for formal-styled headings, but it can adapt for text body as long as it remains a minimum of 15pt in size. It is an ideal option to pair with free PowerPoint presentation templates.

Recommended font pairing: Montserrat, Open Sans, Poppins, Avenir.

#11 – Montserrat

You most likely came across Montserrat at some point in your life, since it is an extremely popular choice among designers for presentations and packaging. Due to this, you won’t spark innovation but rather remain on the safe side for font pairings – which is ideal for corporate styling.

Recommended font pairing: Lora, Open Sans, Merriweather, Oswald, Georgia, Roboto.

#12 – Bentham

Another elegant serif font used for formal occasions, like wedding invitations, headings, or product descriptions. Its kerning makes it readable, unlike many other serif fonts, which is one of the reasons why you can work with this font for the body if you opt for a sans serif in the headings. 

Recommended font pairing: Futura, Open Sans, Lato, Raleway.

#13 – Dosis

It is a simple, monoline sans serif typeface, which works perfectly in its extra light and light font weights to make a drastic contrast with a bold sans serif typeface. Ideally, work with this typeface for subheadings.

Recommended font pairing: Lato, Montserrat, Roboto, Oswald, Raleway.

#14 – Baskerville

You can come across this serif typeface in the form of Libre-Baskerville, a free serif typeface offered by Google. It is ideal for headings, thanks to its traditional style closely resembling the original Baskerville typeface, so it is ideal to stick to it in uppercase mode.

Recommended font pairing: Montserrat, Poppins, Lucida Grande, Helvetica Neue, Open Sans.

#15 – Poppins

This sans serif typeface breaks with the formal style of families like Verdana and Open Sans, introducing some graphical cues that make it adept for more relaxed situations. Therefore, it is ideal to use in team meetings, product presentations, or non-business presentations as long as it remains for title headers.

Recommended font pairing: Raleway, Garamond, Merriweather, Droid Serif. 

#16 – Zenith Script

EnvatoElements is a great marketplace for typefaces; among the options, we can find this brush-style script typeface. Zenith Script is a powerful option to come up with creative title designs for non-corporate meetings, as long as the title remains short. It can also work for branding purposes, and certainly, you can use it as an asset if you are looking for how to start a presentation .

Recommended font pairing: Any sans serif font in uppercase format, with increased kerning. Options can be Open Sans, Bebas Neue (modified), Roboto, and Futura.

#17 – Amnesty

The second option we consider among script typefaces. Amnesty has that dramatic effect that resembles rusting handwriting from the old days. It is ideal for presentations that have to convey a strong emotional factor, like product releases for fashion brands, and we recommend limiting its usage to short titles, always paired with sans serif typefaces.

Recommended font pairing: As it is a custom-made font, we recommend pairing it with its Amnesty Sans listed in the product file.

#18 – Bodoni

This typeface dates all the way back to 1798 and is considered a transitional font type. Its name comes from Giambattista Bodoni, designer, and author of this typeface, whose work was heavily influenced by John Baskerville. As a didone typeface, you find elegant traces that instantly give the feel of a fashion magazine heading, and it is no coincidence that this was the selected typeface for the title of Dante Alighieri’s La Vita Nuova re-print in 1925 .

Recommended font pairing: Brandon Grotesque, Gill Sans, Playfair Display, Raleway, Courier.

#19 – Avant Garde

If you are looking for good presentation fonts, this geometric sans serif is the answer to your question. This typeface is based on the Avant Garde magazine logo and remains one of the most popular condensed sans serif options. Many brands use Avant Gard these days as part of their branding identity, such as Macy’s (lowercase usage), the Scottish rock band Travis, RE/MAX, among others.

Recommended font pairing: Helvetica Neue, Sentinel, Garamond, Neuzeit Grotesk.

#20 – DIN Mittelschrift

Our final typeface in this list is the DIN 1451 sans serif typeface, widely used in traffic signage and administrative/technical applications. Its denomination, Mittelschrift, comes from the German word for medium, which refers to the font weight. You can find it in Engschrift , which stands for condensed. 

Recommended font pairing: Open Sans, Didot, Helvetica Neue, Lucida Grande.

Keep in mind that if you are looking for a proper way how to end a presentation , working with graphics is much better than sticking with type, as you show extra care for the final element in your slide deck. 

Open Sans + Roboto

Didot + DIN Mittelschrift

Bodoni + Gill Sans

Rockwell + Bembo

Bebas Neue + Montserrat Light

Helvetica Neue + Garamond

Oswald + Lato

Baskerville + Montserrat

Lora + Poppins

Book Antiqua + Myriad Pro

Before concluding the technical aspects of this article on best presentation fonts, we want to mention some key elements that you should consider before delivering a presentation or printing it for physical format.

Working with accurate text si zing in presentations can make a difference in how the slides are perceived by the audience. First, let’s make one very valid clarification: a Point (pt, unit used in PowerPoint and other word processing software) equals 1.333 pixels, or we can say a pixel is 0.75 pt.

You can find multiple resources and rules on font sizing intended for web designers, so let’s resume the primary points here:

• Body text should remain 12 to 14pt for legibility. If the presentation is shown from afar, increase body size to 16pt.
• The ratio for headings and titles is twice as big as the body text.
• Subheadings should be between 3-4 pt smaller than headings to make a valid contrast but not compete with the body text.
• Keep an eye on leading , the space between lines of text. Double spacing makes it hard to read in most situations, so avoid it for the text body. 

Getting slides ready for print format

Remember what we mentioned above about not having your fonts installed on the computer? Well, this inconvenience can be easily solved by rastering type before leaving your home or exporting your presentation file. PowerPoint doesn’t offer a native option to do this, so if your presentation has sections that are bound to suffer from font issues, work with them as images, which can be exported from Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator. It is just like working with PowerPoint shapes , but you remain on the safe side of font compatibility issues. 

Word of advice : keep an editable copy instead of just the rastered version.

Color contrast and color testing

Accessibility is the number #1 rule to remember when working with text, as it enhances the performance of your visual communication tactics. In general, don’t work with pure white or pure black colors, since it induces eye strain whenever a spectator has to read your slides for a long while. You can work with color contrast resources such as WebAIM’s Contrast Checker .

If your presentation slides are going to be handed out in deliverable format, be sure to perform a color test before you bulk print the slides. Some colors can be misleading, especially in the conversion from RGB to CMYK color spaces. Also, some light grays may not be accurately printed if done with an inkjet printer. Take some extra time to ensure this process is done right, and avoid last-minute costly frustrations. 

If you need to purchase typefaces, opt for trustworthy marketplaces. Sites like MyFont.com offer an immense collection of font families available for you, plus extra services like WhatTheFont , their AI-based typeface recognition software, which allows you to scan and detect typefaces from documents, images, and more. It is extremely useful if you are looking for a typeface but cannot remember its name.

Alternatives: Fonts.com | Adobe Fonts | Google Fonts

Fontjoy.com

For those who seek to explore creative font pairing schemes, Fontjoy is the site to visit. It is a simple layout, in which you select the font for the Title, Subheading, and Body. You can randomly generate combinations based on the contrast between typeface styles, or start with a typeface you had in mind for one section – lock it – and click on the generate button. 

Keep in mind it has a limited number of typefaces, some of which we mentioned here may not be available.

Alternatives: fontpairings.com

When looking for inspiration to create visually attractive font pairings, Typ.io is a website intended for web font inspiration, meaning to guide designers with different font schemes by looking at the font’s name. 

You can look at some projects in detail, with their CSS code written for you, so you can analyze the font weight used or particular style details.

Typewar.com

Want to have fun while learning about font pairing? Well, an important part of that process is to learn by heart the most used typefaces. Typewar is a website that offers a quiz showing different characters in multiple typefaces, with the input to choose between two font families. It is ideal to practice classic typefaces, and you will increase your knowledge in design by a great deal if you practice 10 minutes a day.

Typescale.com

One crucial aspect of working with text is knowing how to scale it properly. Since readability is critical, you should know when and where to use each font size. Typescale is a website that is intended for web designers and can help convert typefaces from pixels to rem . How is this useful for presenters? Well, since we won’t dwell in pixels and other units besides points (pt), this tool is ideal to tell if a text is legible from distance at the current size you assigned, or whether you should upscale or downscale the body text to make a better contrast with the headings. 

Finally, we conclude this section by introducing Coolors , a palette generator tool that helps designers come up with beautiful color schemes for their work. As we discussed in our color theory for presentations article, it is important to keep an eye on the colors we manage as they contribute to the psychological impact the presentation has on the audience.

Get used to generating creative PowerPoint color palettes for each presentation to make them unique, or help your brand to tailor cooperative slides to the appropriate PowerPoint theme that matches the company’s logo. 

As you can see, getting ready to make a presentation isn’t just an easy feat that can be accomplished in minutes if you aim for custom-made solutions rather than sticking to PowerPoint templates . Increasing your knowledge of font pairing and its proper usage will certainly boost your performance as a presenter, making you less prone to a design faux-pas that diverts the attention from your content.

We recommend you to visit our tutorials on how to add fonts to PowerPoint and how to add fonts to Google Slides . We hope this guide brings light to a complex topic like working with design decisions in presentations and see you next time.

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By lyn January 3, 2024

12 Best Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations (2024)

What are the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations? That’s a question we want to answer in this post.

We list a dozen fonts suitable for presentations. We included different font styles to account for the different presentation styles you can create with Microsoft PowerPoint.

Some fonts are included in the application itself. Others are from marketplaces like Creative Market and Envato Elements.

Envato Elements is a subscription service that gives you access to an unlimited number of downloads of over 80,000 design elements for $16.50/month.

You can get started with a 7-day free trial. We wrote a review on Envato Elements if you’d like to learn more about it.

Let’s get into our list for now.

The Best Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

01. visby cf.

Visby CF is a versatile sans-serif font fit for any PowerPoint presentation.

It’s easy on the eyes when used in lowercase format or lighter font styles.

When you use all uppercase or bold letters, your text becomes more audacious, lending itself to a more noticeable appeal.

This versatility makes this a suitable primary font for any presentation. Use it for headings and paragraph text alike.

The font comes packaged in an OTF file.

Tahoma is a sans-serif font. It was designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft in 1994, after which it was included in the original edition of Windows 95.

It’s been a staple of Microsoft applications like PowerPoint ever since.

The font contains two Windows TrueType fonts in regular and bold weights.

It’s a versatile font perfect for headings and paragraph text as well as personal and professional projects.

03. Caridora

Caridora is a rounded, semi-condensed sans-serif font.

It’s an okay font for text, but it’d truly shine as a heading font, especially for casual or non-corporate presentations.

It comes with two styles in TTF and OTF file formats, meaning four files in total.

04. Palatino Linotype

Palatino Linotype is a modern take on a font by the same name, Palatino. Both the original and digital typefaces were designed by Hermann Zapf.

Hermann designed the original in 1950, after which it became one of the most popular fonts used around the world.

It’s a serif font and a safe option for headings and secondary text in professional presentations.

05. Bergen Sans

Bergen Sans is a big and bold sans-serif font. It’s one of the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations, especially for larger headings meant to grab your viewer’s attention.

This particular font comes packaged as a font family that consists of 6 individual fonts.

Because of this, you can easily use one font for headings and a lighter font from this family for text.

The fonts come in OTF format

Frunch is a bold script font with a vintage flair.

It’d make a great heading font, especially for those in-between slides that only have a simple heading and an accompanying graphic.

The font comes in OTF and TTF file formats and includes 389 glyphs.

07. Addington CF

Addington CF is one of the most elegant serif fonts for PowerPoint presentations.

It’s not too unlike Palatino Linotype, though this font does feature a more vibrant style.

It comes in OTF format and includes 6 font weights plus roman and italic font sets.

Price: Free with Envato Elements.

08. Fonseca

Fonseca is an art deco sans-serif font with a modern twist.

This makes it a suitable choice for headings and subheadings, especially for artistic presentations.

The font is packaged in OTF format with several font styles included. It has 345 glyphs.

09. RNS Camelia

RNS Camelia is a slab serif font. That makes it an incredibly suitable choice for headings right off the bat.

However, it’s also a great text font when used in a lighter font weight.

The font comes in OTF format with 14 styles included.

10. Verdana

Verdana is a classic Microsoft Windows font designed by Mattew Carter. This one, in particular, was one of the first fonts designed with on-screen displays in mind.

It’s a sans-serif font, but a rather plain one.

This makes it most suitable as a text font for professional, and especially corporate, presentations.

Price: Included with PowerPoint.

11. RNS Sanz

RNS Sanz is one of the best sans-serif fonts for PowerPoint presentations.

It’s multipurpose as you can use it as both a heading and text font for PowerPoint presentations.

The font comes in multiple styles and is packaged in OTF and TTF file formats.

Corbel is a rounded sans-serif font that first appeared in Microsoft applications with the release of Windows Vista.

It’s a simple font, but it’s versatile enough to be used as a heading font in professional presentations and a text font in all others.

How to Use Custom Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

Microsoft PowerPoint Online does not allow you to use custom fonts. If you only have access to this version of PowerPoint, you’ll need to stick to the default fonts it comes with.

Based on our list, this means sticking to fonts that say “included with PowerPoint” in the Price section of each list item.

For the desktop version of PowerPoint , follow these steps to upload a custom font into the application:

• Download a copy of the font you want to add to PowerPoint.
• Custom fonts need to be in TTF (TrueType Font) or OTF (OpenType Font) file formats in order to use them in PowerPoint. If your font came in a ZIP folder, unzip the folder to extract the correct file format.
• Double click this file. This opens a window that contains a preview of the font you downloaded.
• Click the Install button in the window. It’s located toward the top.
• If your font came with additional styles (bold, italic, extra bold, etc.), you may see additional TTF and OTF files, one for each additional style. Go through the same process of double clicking and installing each one if you want to use them in PowerPoint.
• Restart your computer (or PowerPoint, at the very least).

That’s it! The font should now be available for use in PowerPoint.

The process is similar on a Mac.

After Step 2, open Font Book on your Mac. Then, drag and drop any files you want to use in PowerPoint from its original folder over to Font Book.

Embedding Fonts in PowerPoint Presentations

If you want to ensure your PowerPoint presentation features all of the custom fonts you used (instead of the app’s default ones), you need to embed them into your final presentation file.

Otherwise, custom fonts will only appear when you show the presentation on a computer that has the font installed.

Here are the steps for embedding fonts on a PC:

• Click File, then Options.
• Open the Save tab.
• Look for the “Preserve fidelity when sharing this document” setting. It’s located at the bottom.
• Make sure the “Embed fonts in the file” option is selected, then click OK.
• Save/export your presentation as usual.

Follow these steps to embed fonts on a Mac:

• Select Preferences.
• Look for the Output and Sharing section, then click Save.
• Look for the “Font Embedding” setting.
• Make sure the “Embed fonts in the file” option is selected.

How to Choose the Best Fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

PowerPoint presentations are akin to signs, posters and even billboards you see as you drive along the highway.

They’re filled with information but are often paired with visuals designed to grab your attention and complement the words they’re attributed to.

However, a good sign or billboard can grab your attention with either. Each slide in your presentation should do the same.

Yes, the visuals in your presentation do a lot, but don’t discredit the power typography can play when it comes to conveying a message or providing facts.

So, instead of choosing any old font to add to your PowerPoint, choose the best fonts for your presentation instead.

It’s best to choose no more than two fonts that complement each other: one for headings and a second for text.

Your heading font should captivate your viewers at a moment’s glance. It should also look good in larger font sizes.

Visby CF, Tahoma, Caridora, Frunch, Addington, and RNS Camelia are all great options for headings.

They each have different styles, though, so make sure you choose one that complements your presentation’s content as well.

For example, Addington is a bit of a fancier, more elegant font. It likely wouldn’t be suitable for a presentation on skateboarding.

It’s best to choose a simpler font for text.

This is because text in PowerPoint presentations is used to convey more information (and words) than headings.

Stick with sans-serif fonts for text since they’re easier to read.

Tahoma, Palatino Lintoype, Bergen Sans, Fonseca, and RNS Sanz are good choices.

Be sure to grab an Envato Elements subscription if you want more choices. They also have thousands of PowerPoint templates, all of which are free with your subscription.

You can get started with a 7-day free trial.

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Microsoft Office

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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.

Want to learn more?

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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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Home » Fonts » 25 Best Fonts for Powerpoint to Elevate Your Presentations

25 Best Fonts for Powerpoint to Elevate Your Presentations

• January 22, 2024

• Written by a professional

Summary: In today’s article, I selected 25 amazing Microsoft fonts that are simply perfect for Powerpoint presentations. My top three favorites are:

• Impact : It helps emphasize key points by its bold and attention-grabbing nature.
• Goudy Old Style : It offers a balanced and readable choice for conveying information.
• Century Gothic : Its clean style is versatile, it does help maintain a professional look.

When it comes to selecting fonts for PowerPoint presentations, I understand the importance of making the right choice to enhance the overall look and effectiveness of slides. Choosing the right font is crucial & this article highlights the best fonts that combine readability with professional style, ensuring your slides make a lasting impression. Whether you're presenting in a corporate meeting or a creative showcase, these fonts will enhance your message and keep your audience engaged. Let's explore my top picks & move your next presentation on new level.

TOP 25 best fonts for PowerPoint

• Goudy Old Style
• Century Gothic
• Baskerville Old Face
• The Serif Hand
• Cooper Black
• Gill Sans Nova
• Alasassy Caps
• Avenir Next LT Pro
• Century Schoolbook
• Georgia Pro
• Verdana Pro
• Vivaldi Italic
• Chamberi Super Display Regular
• Mystical Woods Smooth Script
• Tisa Offc Serif Pro
• Britannic Bold
• Baguet Script Regular
• Modern No. 20
• Modern Love Caps

• About Impact: Impact, with its bold and condensed style, is ideal for PowerPoint presentations needing striking headlines or attention-grabbing titles.

2. Goudy Old Style

• About Goudy Old Style: Goudy Old Style offers an elegant, traditional touch to PowerPoint presentations, perfect for formal or historical topics.

3. Century Gothic

• About Century Gothic: Century Gothic, known for its clean, sans-serif design, is suitable for modern and minimalistic PowerPoint presentations requiring readability.

4. Baskerville Old Face

• About Baskerville Old Face: Baskerville Old Face adds a touch of classic sophistication to PowerPoint presentations, ideal for literature or history-themed slides.

5. The Serif Hand

• About The Serif Hand: The Serif Hand, with its handwritten appearance, is great for informal or creative PowerPoint presentations that aim for a personal touch.

6. Cooper Black

• About Cooper Black: Cooper Black, with its rounded, bold letters, is excellent for casual or playful PowerPoint presentations needing a friendly tone.

7. Gill Sans Nova

• About Gill Sans Nova: Gill Sans Nova, a refined sans-serif font, is versatile for both professional and casual PowerPoint presentations, offering clarity and elegance.

8. Alasassy Caps

• About Alasassy Caps: Alasassy Caps, characterized by its stylish uppercase letters, is suitable for decorative titles in modern or fashion-themed PowerPoint presentations.

9. Avenir Next LT Pro

• About Avenir Next LT Pro: Avenir Next LT Pro, known for its sleek and professional look, is ideal for business or technology-themed PowerPoint presentations.

10. Century Schoolbook

• About Century Schoolbook: Century Schoolbook, with its legible and formal style, is perfect for educational or academic PowerPoint presentations.

11. Georgia Pro

• About Georgia Pro: Georgia Pro, a serif font, offers excellent readability and a professional look, suitable for varied PowerPoint presentation topics.

12. Verdana Pro

• About Verdana Pro: Verdana Pro, designed for high readability on screens, is a great choice for text-heavy PowerPoint presentations.

13. Vivaldi Italic

• About Vivaldi Italic: Vivaldi Italic, with its elegant and flowing script, is ideal for artistic or decorative titles in PowerPoint presentations.

14. Chamberi Super Display Regular

• About Chamberi Super Display Regular: This font, known for its sophisticated and impactful style, is perfect for headlines in modern PowerPoint presentations.

15. Garamond

• About Garamond: Garamond, a classic and timeless serif font, is suitable for formal and sophisticated PowerPoint presentations.

16. Broadway

• About Broadway: Broadway, with its art deco style, is excellent for PowerPoint presentations that require a touch of retro glamour.

17. Tw Cen MT

• About Tw Cen MT: Tw Cen MT offers a sleek, geometric appearance, making it suitable for contemporary and business-oriented PowerPoint presentations.

18. Gungsuh

• About Gungsuh : Gungsuh, a Korean font, is ideal for PowerPoint presentations that require an Asian aesthetic or for presentations in Korean language.

19. Mystical Woods Smooth Script

• About Mystical Woods Smooth Script: With its flowing and decorative style, this font is perfect for creative or fantasy-themed PowerPoint presentations.

20. Tisa Offc Serif Pro

• About Tisa Offc Serif Pro: Tisa Offc Serif Pro, known for its readability and elegance, is a versatile choice for a range of PowerPoint presentation themes.

21. Britannic Bold

• About Britannic Bold: Britannic Bold, with its strong and assertive style, is great for headlines in business or educational PowerPoint presentations.

22. Rockwell

• About Rockwell: Rockwell, known for its slab-serif and sturdy appearance, is ideal for PowerPoint presentations requiring a robust and solid feel.

23. Baguet Script Regular

• About Baguet Script Regular: Baguet Script Regular, with its handwritten, cursive style, adds a personal and artistic touch to PowerPoint presentations.

24. Modern No. 20

• About Modern No. 20: Modern No. 20, featuring a sleek and elegant design, is suitable for formal and contemporary PowerPoint presentations.

25. Modern Love Caps

• About: Modern Love Caps, with its playful and bold hand-drawn lettering, is best suited for engaging PowerPoint presentations that aim to convey creativity and uniqueness.

Want more fonts for PowerPoint?

If you want to find more fonts and get access to milions of elements for Canva, browse my favorite site: Envato Elements .

They have all kinds of assets such as:

• Fonts (40,000+)
• Stock photos (9,3M+)
• Graphic templates (270,000+)
• Presentation templates (110,000+)
• Stock videos (5,1M+)
• Video templates (96,000+)
• 3D elements (210,000+)
• WordPress assets (6,500+)
• Royalty-free music (140,000+)

How to choose the best fonts for PowerPoint?

• Readability : Prioritize fonts that are easy to read, even from a distance. Steer clear of overly ornate or decorative fonts that may hinder comprehension.
• Consistency : Maintain font consistency throughout your presentation. Stick to two or three fonts at most to create a cohesive and professional look.
• Audience and Purpose : Consider your audience and the purpose of your presentation. Formal presentations may call for classic, serif fonts, while creative or informal presentations can benefit from more playful, sans-serif fonts.
• Contrast : Use font contrast to your advantage. Pair a bold font for headers with a more straightforward font for body text to create visual interest and hierarchy.
• Testing : Experiment with different fonts in your PowerPoint design. Test them on sample slides to see how they look in context, both in terms of style and legibility, before finalizing your choices.

What are PowerPoint fonts usually used for?

• Readability and Clarity : Fonts in PowerPoint are primarily used to ensure the text on slides is clear and easily readable, facilitating the communication of information and ideas.
• Visual Hierarchy : Fonts help establish a visual hierarchy in presentations. Different font styles, sizes, and weights distinguish headings, subheadings, and body text, guiding the audience's attention.
• Tone and Style : Fonts play a vital role in conveying the tone and style of the presentation. They can communicate formality, creativity, professionalism, or informality, depending on your choice.
• Branding and Consistency : Fonts contribute to maintaining branding consistency in presentations. Organizations often have specific fonts associated with their identity, which can be used to reinforce brand recognition.
• Visual Appeal and Impact : Fonts can be creatively employed to add visual interest and personality to slides. Unique or stylized fonts can be used for emphasis, thematic alignment, or to engage the audience's visual senses.

In conclusion, this exploration of the 25 best fonts for PowerPoint reveals a versatile range of typographic choices to enhance your presentations. Among them, three fonts shine – Impact , ideal for bold headings and capturing attention; Goudy Old Style , a timeless choice for balanced and readable body text; and Century Gothic , offering a clean and modern design to maintain professionalism. Like a painter's palette, these fonts empower you to craft impactful messages that resonate with your audience, whether you're delivering a corporate report or a captivating sales pitch, ensuring your words leave a lasting impression with a touch of sophistication and contemporary flair.

Hana Terber

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Blog > How to find the best font for your PowerPoint presentation

How to find the best font for your PowerPoint presentation

07.26.21   •  #powerpoint #tips.

An important point for PowerPoint presentations is to choose a suitable font that is easy to read but at the same time shouldn't be boring. Are you still looking for a good font for your presentation? We have listed a few tips for you here.

Serif or Sans Serif font?

Serif fonts are fonts that have fine lines at the end of the letters, such as the Times New Roman font. They are especially used in print.

Fonts without serifs appear more modern and are easier to read, which is why it makes sense to use a sans serif font for the texts. The resolution of these fonts is also better on the beamer, which is why they are mostly used for presentations.

However, you should always pay attention to the topic you are giving your presentation on. Above all, you should bear in mind that serif fonts tend to look older, while sans-serif fonts look modern. Think about what you want to communicate with your presentation and then choose a suitable font.

Which fonts look good together?

To avoid your presentation looking messy or confusing, do not combine more than 2 fonts. It is best to use a different font for headings than for bullet points.

When combining different fonts, make sure that the two fonts are not too similar and that they differ from each other. The contrast between them should also not be too great, otherwise the whole thing will look inharmonious. It makes sense to combine a serif font with a sans serif font.

Another possibility is to combine fonts from the same font family. The contrast is usually created by different stroke widths and the text looks harmonious.

What is a good font size for PowerPoint presentations?

When choosing the font size, it is best to consider where the presentation will be given and how far away the audience is. The font should be large enough to be easily read from the very back.

Headings should be somewhere between 40pt and 50pt. The individual bullet points should not be smaller than 20pt and can be up to about 32pt.

To make the presentation easy to read, it is important to have a high contrast between the background and the font. It is best to always use a light font on a dark background or vice versa. The best contrast is between black and white.

Best fonts for PowerPoint

So finding the best font for you depends on many factors. But we have listed a few fonts here that do well in presentations.

This is a rather new font and therefore optimised for the screen. Its particularly wide spaces make it easy to read.

Like Verdana, Segoe UI is particularly easy to read on the screen. Its narrower character spacing also makes it very suitable for headlines.

Corbel appears very organized, clear and serious. It has also been optimised for presentations and is still easy to read even at greater distances.

Palatino is a rather unusual font that stands out from all the default fonts. It looks very elegant and is easy to read.

This is one of the oldest fonts and is more of a font style that includes fonts such as Garamond ITC and Adobe Garamond.

Tahoma is a very legible and clear font that is especially popular for presentations.

Century Gothic

Century Gothic has a geometric style and is particularly suitable for headlines and small amounts of text.

Script, italic and decorative fonts tend to read slowly and interrupt the flow of reading. It is better to avoid such fonts in your presentations.

Download fonts for PowerPoint

Would you like to use a font that has perhaps not been seen that often? Then you can also search for a nice font for your PowerPoint presentation on Google Fonts and download it for free.

When you have found a suitable font, select it and click on Download. Then open the ".ttf file" and click on Install. You can now use the font in your PowerPoint presentation.

Embed fonts in PowerPoint

If you now use one of the fonts you have downloaded, there is only one problem you need to be aware of.

You may be giving the presentation on another computer that does not have the font installed. Your selected font will then simply be replaced by a standard font so that at least the text can still be read.

What you can do about this and how to embed fonts in PowerPoint can be read here.

What is the best font for PowerPoint?

Some fonts that will look good in your presentation are: Verdana, Segoe UI, Corbel und Tahoma. But finding the right font for your PowerPoint depends on many factors. We have written down some tips for you to find the best font.

What is the best font size for PowerPoint?

The font should be large enough to be easy to read even at greater distances. Headings should be somewhere between 40pt and 50pt in size. Bullet points should not be smaller than 20pt and can be up to about 32pt.

Which fonts look good together in presentations?

Do not combine more than 2 fonts in your presentation. Use one for headings and one for the bullet points. If you combine different fonts make sure that they are not too similar but also that the contrast between them is not too great. A good combination for example is Cambria and Calibri.

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About the author.

Helena Reitinger

Helena supports the SlideLizard team in marketing and design. She loves to express her creativity in texts and graphics.

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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.

• PowerPoint design / Visual communication

Conference presentations are really hard to get right compared to day-to-day presentations. How do you tackle bigger stages, bigger rooms, bigger audiences and higher stakes?

Insights from a presentation templates expert

• PowerPoint design / Industry insights

A PowerPoint template is the foundation on which polished and professional presentations are built. We interview BrightCarbon’s new Templates Lead, Gemma Leamy, and pick her brains on the ideal process for creating robust PowerPoint templates.

115 PowerPoint Christmas cards to download and share!

• PowerPoint design
• Comments: 45

It's Christmas! After a late night with too much eggnog and brandy snaps we set ourselves a challenge to see who could come up with the wildest PowerPoint Christmas card! So it's the day after the night before, and through blurry eyes we can reveal our efforts...

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!

Join the BrightCarbon mailing list for monthly invites and resources

We have other people in our own business reaching out to say this is the best presentation they have seen. Sarah Walker Softchoice

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Blog / Presentation Design / The 10 best presentation fonts to transform your next PowerPoint.

The 10 best presentation fonts to transform your next PowerPoint.

Welcome to our new presentation font dating show: What’s your type? Starting with ten eligible font choices, you’ll get to know your future font intimately. Based on purpose and personality, you’ll whittle the list down before making your final decision and running off into the sunset with the font of your dreams. 

With over 600,000 fonts on  What Font Is  alone, the term choice paralysis doesn’t quite cover the sweat-inducing panic that accompanies picking just one font for your PowerPoint presentation. How do you even begin to narrow them down and find the best font for your needs? Do you choose based on the name you like most? Perhaps you simply keep returning to your ex font, even though you two clearly have communication issues? Or maybe you just close your eyes and see which your mouse lands on?

Why isn’t there a tinder for fonts?

You obviously can’t be trusted to make this decision on your own. Which is why we’ve done the legwork for you, rounding up ten beautiful, brilliant, and personality-packed font choices for you to choose from.

Enough of the build up.

10 best fonts for presentations

Shall we meet them.

Designed by Matthew Carter, Tahoma is one of Microsoft’s most popular sans serif typefaces.

Another of Matthew Carter’s designs, Verdana is a prime example of a font created specifically for the screen.

Impact gets about a bit. Named as one of the  core fonts for the web , this font has been seen by just about everyone.

Georgia is a nineties gal. Designed for screen, Georgia’s weight fluctuates by a whole pixel, which is greater than traditional print typography.

5. Palatino

Palatino was originally designed for headings and is legible even on the inferior paper of the post-World War II period.

6. Proxima Nova

Proxima Nova is the go-to font for just about anything. Oh, it’s flexible alright.

7. ITC Souvenir

This personable little number gets along with loads of other fonts, just ask Futura and Roboto.

8. Montserrat

A Buenos Aires export, old posters and signs in the artist’s hometown inspired the creation of this 30-year old stunner.

Initially created by Matt McInerney as a single-weight font, but my, my, has Raleway come a long way since then.

Lato was originally betrothed to a large corporate client, but they decided to go in another direction, so now it’s back on the public market, and looking for Mr Right.

The best font for your PowerPoint presentation is somewhere in this selection, just waiting for you to choose it. How does that feel? 

Well, I’m excited. Let’s get cut-throat and start removing the fonts that just aren’t right for you.

Round one: Finding a presentation font with purpose

Fonts are much more than a pretty (type)face to look good sitting on your PowerPoint slide. They have strengths and weaknesses, just like any of us. In order to choose your perfect font, you first need to decide which one fits your purpose. All relationships are chosen based on practicalities, right?

Do you want a simple life, or something a little extra?

Understanding your ultimate goal isn’t just important when it comes to  writing your story . The final deliverable, audience, and even the room layout all need to be taken into account when choosing your font. After all, if they can’t read your message, what’s the likelihood they’re going to remember it?

There are two main font categories for you to decide between: serifs and sans serifs. There are others, such as script and stencil, but we’re trying to keep this simple. Both serifs and sans serifs have their own benefits and specified use cases, making it easy to find the right font category for your need. Let’s start with serifs.

Could a sophisticated serif be the best font for your presentation?

Serifs are the little extra flourishes that sit at the ends of the larger strokes. They likely came about because the Romans would first paint the outlines onto stone before carving, and the paint brushes would create flares at the ends. Serif fonts more closely represent handwriting and, therefore, are universally acknowledged to be easier to read in print. The serifs create joins between letters, similar to how we’re taught to write in school.

Traditionalists will tell you that serif fonts should only be used for print, but we say that’s nonsense. In fact, serifs have made a  huge comeback , have taken over the web, and are in some damn trendy presentations.

We don’t recommend using serif fonts for body copy, as they aren’t always the clearest, but for titles, or as a supporting font, they can work nicely to liven up your slides, while delivering that touch of class some of you might be looking for. 

If you strip your slides right back to just powerful key statements, you want to draw the eye to the title, or your PowerPoint is destined to be printed, congratulations, you’ve just narrowed down your choices.

Our sassy serifs are:

ITC Souvenir

Certain about serifs? Feel free to  jump to the next section .

Or is a simple sans serif the best font for your presentation?

If you want to keep your options open, let’s bring in our sans serif sensations.

Are you looking for something versatile, sleek, and modern for your presentation font? Look no further than our sans serifs. As digital has taken over from print, so too have sans serifs. These font families are considered better for online and screen formats. This is because their simplified forms translate well across different screen resolutions. 

But don’t be too quick to jump to a sans, just because your presentation is destined for the screen only. Sure, if you’re going to pack the slides with copy, a sans serif may be your only choice. However, if you want our honest opinion, your best move here is to shift most of that text into your speaker notes. But that’s a lesson for another time. 

If you can’t be sure about the technical specifications of the kit you’ll be presenting on, you don’t know how big the room will be, or you might want to reuse your deck for a variety of purposes, you won’t go too far wrong with a sans serif font for your presentation.

If you want to play it safe with a sans, your remaining font choices are:

Proxima Nova

You may think you have your heart set on a typographical temptress now, but we’re only halfway through the round. There’s much more to presentation purpose than how much copy is on the slide.

Know your presentation font limits

Have you ever spent days crafting a beautiful presentation, just to stand up on the day in front of a nauseating hurricane of copy calamity?

Nobody wants their font to make a scene in front of a crowd so, if your presentation is ever going to be viewed, presented or edited on a machine that isn’t yours, you need to take the innate availability of your font into account. 

Why use system fonts in your presentation?

If you just want an easy life, to be able to take your chosen font anywhere and have them behave appropriately, you’re going to want to stick with a system font. Choosing a system font means it doesn’t matter what machine you, or anyone else, opens your presentation on, it will always look exactly how you meant it to. There’s certainly a place for custom fonts in presentations, but you have to know exactly where that presentation is going, and have the foresight to install the font on every machine that could open it. 

If you want to stay safe with a system, but keep it sassy with a serif, you’ve just narrowed your choices to:

If you’re the type of person that doesn’t like to take any risks, you’re going to want to go for a sans serif system font:

Look at that. We’re getting closer to your perfect match.

Settled on system? Now would be a great time to  jump to round two . Don’t even let your heart be tempted away by those exotic custom fonts.

Custom fonts to make your presentation stand out

We all want to stand out from the crowd, especially if you happen to be just one presentation in a long line your audience is seeing that day. One way to stick out from the onslaught of Arial is to use a custom font. When we say custom, we don’t necessarily mean you have to pay a typographer to create one just for you. But you could.

No, if you use a custom font, you just open your presentation possibilities up to the whole world of fonts, beyond what can be found on all machines, as standard. 

If you have complete control over everywhere your presentation lands, and can install your font in all these locations, you have the freedom to get a little more creative with your copy.

Want to go custom, but stay classy? Your serif font is:

Boom! Decision made. However, you may still want to  jump to part two to take the personality test, before you put a ring on it.

Prioritising versatility, but happy to be vigilant? Your sans choices are:

By now, I know you have a favourite. Before we finally get to hear from our fonts, let’s make sure you have all the information you need to get your chosen one to the finish line.

How to install custom fonts in PowerPoint

Start by downloading the font. The font you choose will determine which online location you need to visit to source it. Some reliable sites are  Google Fonts ,  Font Squirrel ,  Da Font , and  Font Fabric . 

Installing your fonts on Windows

Find the font file that you downloaded. It’s probably in a zip file and located in your downloads folder.

Double-click  the font file and it will open in the Font Previewer.

Click Install  at the top left.

Installing your font on Mac

Find the font file you downloaded. It likely has a .ttf or .otf extension and it’s probably in your downloads folder.  Double-click  on it.

NOTE: If the font file has a .zip extension you need to open that .zip file and open the font file from there.

It will open in the Font Previewer.  Click Install Font  to open in Font Book.

In Font Book, drag and drop the font to Windows Office Compatible to make it available to Microsoft Office.

After you’ve installed the font, whether on Mac or PC, you need to restart PowerPoint for it to appear in your font list, ready to use.

Round two: How to avoid a personality clash

You’ve used your noggin and picked some practical choices. Now it’s time to bring in the heart. 

The font you use for your PowerPoint presentation says so much more than the copy it’s used for. Fonts convey emotion, they have personalities and, when used right, they help to visually tell your brand story. After all, you wouldn’t write a formal tender document in Comic Sans, would you?

No, you’d choose something that communicates respect and integrity, such as Bodoni or Optima.

But these guys are just gatecrashers. Back to the main event.

Let’s hand over to  our  fonts, so you can get to know them a little better.

First up, our reliable system fonts.

“I’m pretty neutral. The Switzerland of fonts. My personality may not be wacky enough for some, but I’m always up to have some good, clean fun.

I go with anything, complementing whatever design style you’ve chosen, rather than trying to stamp my personality all over it.

Some call me boring, I like to think I’m agreeable. After all, is your presentation really about me?”

“I’m a modern font with an air of innocence. Clean cut, yet retaining just enough personality to liven up your presentation, I will add a dash of character without stealing the show.

I’ve been described as “cheap”, but I prefer to think of myself as simple. I stand back to let your message shine through.”

“Want to make a statement? I’m the font for you. 

My popularity hasn’t made me any less  impactful .

I may be heavy and condensed in style, but I look great in all caps and am effortless to read.  

Big, bold, and powerful; when you’re with me, no one in the room will be able to take their eyes off you.”

“I may be traditional, but traditions stick around for a reason. I’m sophisticated, certain, confident and reliable. Yes, I prefer to err on the side of practicality, over flamboyance, but if you’re looking for someone to take to a formal occasion, I’m the font for you. After all, people often describe me as looking “expensive”.

With such high contrast between my weights, ample letter spacing and clever design, your message will come across, loud and clear.

Want to put some power behind your presentations? I don’t mean to brag, but my bold is significantly more bold than your average. 

To put it simply: I’m a classic.”

“Pfft. A classic? A relic, you mean. Who wants classic, when you can have modern classic?

I’m popular among professionals, as my sharp edges add a dash of character, without getting too crazy. 

Originally designed for headings, I can certainly stand out from a crowd, but my open counters and carefully-weighted strokes mean I also look great as body copy.”

Phew, things are certainly heating up around here. Before you make your final choice, let’s not forget about our custom contestants.

“Now, now, please don’t be intimidated by my beauty. 

I may be stunning, but I’m so much more. I have so many different weights, I might just be the most versatile font around. You can take me to any occasion, and I will adapt.

As a premium find, I don’t come cheap, but if you have a subscription to Adobe, you can get me through  Adobe Fonts , at no extra cost. Consider this your lucky day.” 

“I am so in right now. By choosing me you will instantly freshen up your slides and add relevance to your designs.

I combine the traditional elegance of a serif with a so-hip-it-hurts retro 90s vibe. I’m curvy in all the right places and will catapult your presentation into the here and now, without losing the credibility that comes with a classic serif.”

I’m a reaaaaal solid font. A hipster classic.

If you want a font that complements your check shirt, I’m your guy.” 

“What do you need to know about me? Well, I’m thicc. 

If you’re looking for something chunky and bold, look no further. 

Oh, you’re not? Wait, please don’t go.

I can be sleek and thin for your text pull outs, too.

Or just a regular type for body copy.

I’m diverse and eager to please. Just let me know what you need, and I’ll find a solution for you.”

“You can’t judge a book by its cover, and you can’t presume to know a font on first glance.

To the untrained eye, I might look like any other sans serif font, but just get to know me and you’ll see my originality shine through.”

And that’s everyone. Now that you’ve met our fonts, all that’s left for us to do is ask the big question…

What’s your type?

You have everything you need to make a smart decision about the best font for your PowerPoint presentation, but your adventure together is only just beginning.

Here are some more tips to get the most out of your new beau.

Perhaps one font isn’t enough?

There are many reasons that you might want to use more than one font in a presentation, however, ain’t nobody got time to pick a pair through trial and error. That’s why you come to us for our sweet presentation design services , right?

Usually, a font with a big personality paired with a more conservative font works well. Pairing a serif with a sans serif can create a nice contrast, but remember to use the sans serif for heavy body copy, as you want it to be legible. You can have a little more fun with your header type, as this tends to be larger, with more space to breathe.

Avoid pairing types that are too similar. If they aren’t distinguishable from each other it can look like you just made a mistake.

If you found it hard to decide which font to choose earlier, pairing two fonts is your chance to have your cake and eat it too. 

Some examples of good couples are:

ITC Souvenir works really well with Roboto and Futura. Roboto and Futura are classic fonts, but they don’t come native to Microsoft Office, so they will need downloading and installing.

Alternatively, our curvaceous ITC Souvenir sits pretty as a picture next to a simple font, like Proxima Nova.

Raleway works with Playfair Display, a beautiful serif font that’s available free from Google Fonts.

Montserrat, which was designed specifically for use online, works perfectly with an old-school classic, like Courier New. The light, modern feel of Montserrat contrasts beautifully with the retro, typewriter vibe of Courier New.

Or you could pair Impact with Tahoma, or even Lato, for a perfect presentation font combo.

If you’re unsure, play it safe. Choose a typeface with lots of weight variations (like Open Sans below), and pair fonts from the same family. After all, they were created to work together. Just make sure there’s enough contrast to make the two types distinguishable.

Finally, don’t go crazy with your number of fonts. You can be a little greedy and get away with it, but at some point, they’re all just going to start fighting one another for your affections. As a general rule for presentations, there should be no more than three or four variations in type, weight or effect. That means you can usually get away with two different typefaces. You can then bold, italicise or change the weight for the remaining variations.

How do my fonts look to other people?

We know what’s really important to you. It’s not whether you like your font choice, not really. You care that your message is communicated clearly and effectively to your audience, and your use of type plays a part in this. Here are a few tricks you can use to make sure the message you’re sending out into the world is the right one.

Be bold to stand out

Use italics to  stress  a point or to indicate a publication, such as;  How to choose the best font for your PowerPoint presentation .

A lot of people like to use  bold  to make their key information stand out. But be careful. If you embolden too many things, what’s important gets lost in a sea of bold.

We don’t see a lot of underlines these days, do we? This is something you can use to your advantage. If you have a word or phrase that really needs some bite, throw a lone underline in there for maximum impact. 

Get in line

It is really important to be consistent with your alignment choice. If your alignment jumps from left to right, to centre, back to right, the likelihood is your audience aren’t following. It makes it difficult for them to know where their eye should go, and it can make them feel pretty seasick. 

Left-aligned text is the easiest to read. In  the West , this is the most commonly-used alignment, as we read left to right. It also creates a clean left edge for our eyes to return back to, once we reach the end of the previous line. It’s like a typewriter, always returning to the same point.

Right-aligned text is usually used for decoration, or to accompany a logo. It’s not very easy to read when in large blocks, because your eyes have to do summersaults to find the beginning of the line again.

Centred text works for small snippets of text, such as posters and book covers. Like with right alignment, your eyes will struggle to follow from line to line, if it’s any more than a few sentences.

Justified text is generally acknowledged as a sure-fire way to create order. However, it can be difficult to get right. Justified text makes the words fit a pre-determined line length, by changing the distance between each word. This means each line has a sharp, consistent edge, but can create big white spaces between words called ‘rivers. Justified text can be particularly difficult for people with dyslexia to read, as the ‘rivers’ distract from the actual text.

Optimise your copy

The optimum line length for presentation copy is 50 characters. This allows the eye to keep track of where the next line starts, so the jump back is seamless.

One of the biggest peeves when it comes to working with typography in presentations is untidy sentence endings. We’re not talking about ending with a preposition, it’s only really dull people that care about that. We’re referring to how a body of text is shaped.

Avoid raggedy paragraph structures, which cause your, otherwise beautiful, design to look untidy and unfinished.

If you’re using left-aligned text, look out for any big gaps or words that hang off the end of the line. Try using a soft return to move them around, as this creates less space between lines than a hard return and notifies the brain that you’re still within the same paragraph.

The lonely hearts club

This is all great advice, until you add in the complication of widows and orphans.

A widow is a lonely word with a line all to itself. You can fix this with that soft return trick, knocking a word or two down from the line above. Your widow won’t be so lonely anymore.

An orphan is when that single word, or a single line, causes you to have to start a new column, or a new slide entirely. Again, either editing your copy or adjusting the structure of the whole paragraph will fix this.

Try to strike a balance between the perfect paragraph shape, and removing your widows and orphans. If you have to make the call, it’s better to have a ragged line than a widow.

Not enough information for you?

As you can see, when working to plan your idyllic future with your new partner in presentations, there’s quite a lot to get your head around. For more tips on creating beautiful slides, check out our  presentation design cheat sheet , explore more system font choices with our  comprehensive overview of what’s available , or get in touch to set up your very own, exclusive episode of  What’s your type?

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50+ Best Fonts for PowerPoint (PPT Fonts) 2024

When designing a PowerPoint presentation to deliver a business project, pitch, or portfolio, one of the key elements that you’ll spend your time deciding on is a font, or set of fonts, to use for your headings, captions, and text bodies.

Although it may seem like a simple decision, the typeface you use has the potential to change the entire feel of your presentation, so it’s imperative to choose wisely!

The bad news is that there are hundreds of thousands of fonts out there, and it’s impossible to test each and every one of them. The good news? We’ve done the hard yards for you and created a list of the top options available, and they’re all waiting for you to download and use at the click of a button.

Read on for some of the best fonts for PowerPoint!

One Subscription: Unlimited Access to Stunning Premium Fonts

Get every varied font and typeface you could ever need with one simple subscription. From just $16, get unlimited access to thousands of fonts, typefaces, graphics, templates, photos and illustrations.

Serif Fonts

Handwritten Fonts

Monospace Fonts

Sans Serif Fonts

Decorative Fonts

Condensed Fonts

Hempa sans geometric font for powerpoint.

Hempa Sans is a beautiful geometric font that features a set of letters with a clean-cut design. It also has subtle stylistic elements to give your typography a very attractive look and feel. It’s ideal for designing both headings and body text in your slideshows. The font family features 16 styles of fonts.

Visby CF – Geometric Font Family for PowerPoint

Visby is another geometric font family that has a clean and professional letter design. This font is ideal for crafting an entire presentation with easily readable text. There are 8 font weights and obliques included in this font family.

Versanity PPT Font

Versanity is one of the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations. It features a delicate and elegant design that feels right at home in strictly professional settings. Use it confidently in your upcoming presentation, and allow yourself to be astonished by the result produced.

Streamline Moderne PPT Font

Check out Streamline Moderne, an elegant and modern serif font that will add a nice vintage flair to your presentation. It offers a gorgeous, sleek design, uppercase and lowercase letters, and a range of features that are sure to take your PowerPoint up a notch.

Geotrica PPT Font

Geotrica is a modern sans-serif font family that comes with a range of weights and equips you with four typeface styles. Whether you need it to stylize the body text or headings in your PowerPoint presentation, Geotrica is a font worth investing in.

Kaelia PPT Font

If you are putting together a branding presentation, you will absolutely love Kaelia, a simple yet stylish sans-serif font that works perfectly in both large and small sizes. It’s one of the best ppt fonts on our list!

Preface PPT Font

The next in our list of the best fonts for PowerPoint is the modern and simplistic Preface, a fresh sans serif typeface designed for professional presentations that will engage your audience without drawing them away from the content! It comes in three different weights and can be used in any size.

Rustyne PowerPoint Font

Next up we have Rustyne, another authentically hand-drawn typeface but this time with a rustic brushed look that makes it ideal for a creative presentation for a new business or project. This lovely script font comes with full uppercase and lowercase characters plus a range of numbers, symbols, and alternates.

Highline PowerPoint Font

If you’re searching for a cute, feminine calligraphy style font for your next PowerPoint presentation, consider the Highline typeface, which offers a beautiful script with an elegant and creative feel and includes a wealth of ligatures and alternates for you to choose from.

Rollgates Fabulous PPT Font

Our list of the best fonts for PowerPoint features a number of vintage options, but when it comes to choosing our favorite, Rollsgates Fabulous definitely takes the cake. We wholeheartedly recommend you try it out for any corporate presentation purpose.

Washington Fabulous PPT Font

Washington is another amazing typeface for PowerPoint presentations that’s sure to impress your clients. It has a warm and friendly appeal that will instantly transform your dull, everyday PowerPoint into a presentation worth appreciating.

Getcode Pro PPT Font

If you’re looking to create a professional presentation that looks stylish but not flashy, Getcode Pro is the best choice for you. It’s a slab serif font with a modern design fitting to a pool of business and corporate projects. Get it today!

Walton Elegant PPT Font

Another top-notch font to consider for PowerPoint presentations is Walton. The typeface can be optimized for body text, or headlines, and is easily one of the most used PowerPoint fonts when it comes to preparing ppts for creative industries.

Bale Belly PowerPoint Font

Bale Belly is a cute handwritten font duo that’s great for a school project or kid-friendly presentation and includes a clean sans serif typeface with upper and lowercase characters as well as a corresponding calligraphy font that features lowercase letters and a range of stylistic alternates.

Lemonade Duo PPT Font

A set of matching script and serif fonts, the Lemonade typeface package includes a stylish, handwritten signature-style script that’s great for headings and quotes, and an elegant, all-caps serif option to complement it. Included are more than 50 ligatures for an authentic hand-made look.

Myron PPT Font

Myron is a beautiful family of delicate serif fonts, featuring five different weight options, various formats, and a total of 249 glyphs, including uppercase and lowercase multilingual letters, numbers, and punctuation, as well as several non-English characters. It’s perfect for any kind of PowerPoint, from personal portfolios to business projects.

Herz PPT Font

Looking for a simple and effective font for your upcoming presentation? You need Herz, a modern, minimal typeface option featuring three weights namely light, regular and bold. It has a professional design that works best for corporate PowerPoint presentations.

Houston PPT Font

Another perfect combination of two contrasting fonts, the timeless Houston typeface duo features a classical script in four different variations, and an elegant all caps serif. As a PUA encoded font, it’s a highly versatile option that’s compatible with almost any software program.

Chapillada PPT Font

The Chapillada typeface is a clean, modern handwritten font that’s perfect for creative projects and portfolios. This stylish option includes upper and lowercase characters, numbering and punctuation, as well as ligatures for a realistic hand-brushed look. It looks best as the center of attention, in a large size as a heading or title.

Hornimet PPT Font

Our next typeface is a dramatic hand lettering font featuring all caps characters, numbers, and punctuation, as well as a web font addition. It’s great for crafty, creative presentations and designs where a unique heading or title is needed and is best rendered in an authentic black ink style.

Brioche PPT Font

Brioche is a stunning, classical serif font with a modern twist. It’s available with condensed spacing in two weight styles and offers a range of alternate characters for each letter, as well as full multi-language support. It’s highly versatile and can be applied to any kind of business or personal PowerPoint template.

Vintage Diary PPT Font

Unique and modern, the next of our best ppt fonts is Vintage Diary, a stunning option for PowerPoint presentations of any kind. Use this font with confidence, and leave your clients, and colleagues in awe of your professionalism.

Molita PPT Font

One of the best fonts for PowerPoint, if you need to include a signature in your design, is the Molita font, a beautiful signature script font with an elegant and authentic handwritten feel. It includes both uppercase and lowercase letters, numbering, and punctuation, as well as 71 stunning ligatures.

Parkia PPT Font

For a simple, no-nonsense option, the Parkia is a modern sans serif condensed typeface that’s perfect for industrial and corporate PowerPoint presentations. Inspired by newsprint and editorial elements, it’s brilliant as a headline, title or logo font, and renders particularly well in smaller sizes.

CornerOne PPT Font

For a subtle vintage feel, consider the simple, round CornerOne font, a clean and concise sans serif option that includes numbers and glyphs, and comes in both bold and regular variations, as well as supporting both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. It’s an understated and versatile typeface that can be applied to any presentation.

Wirebet PPT Font

The Wirebet font gets its name from combining the words wireframe and alphabet. Wireframes are created for the purpose of arranging elements to best accomplish a particular purpose, and that’s exactly what this clean, functional icon-based font is designed to do! It will help you construct a web concept in your presentation and visualize or highlight certain web design elements.

Mabrick PPT Font

Mabrick is a rough, vintage serif typeface that’s sure to capture the attention of an audience in any kind of creative presentation – we think it’d be especially fitting when used as part of an art portfolio. It comes with alternative characters and a full suite of glyphs with foreign language letters included.

Duarose PPT Font

If you’re searching for a classic and elegant serif typeface with a range of alternates and stylistic accents, look no further than the Duarose. It’s a stunning all caps font that comes with full multi-language support that can be rendered perfectly in any size and will make any presentation look professional and polished.

Mandalika PPT Font

A similar font is the Mandalika, but this bold, modern serif typeface comes in both upper and lowercase. It also features many different ligatures and alternate characters for a truly unique and elegant look and is PUA encoded for ease of use.

Friday’s Lazy PPT Font

This beautiful thin sans serif font is a simple yet quirky option for any kind of presentation and suits a crafty or hipster aesthetic. Elegant, understated, and highly versatile, it can be used for headings or main text fields, as it renders well in any size and offers regular spacing for readability.

Anise PPT Font

Anisa is a charming, rustic hand-painted sans serif font that provides an authentic hand-brushed ink effect, and is ideal for a cafe or boutique to use as part of its branding. It can be applied to logos, headings, and any line of text that needs to make an impact, and looks particularly good when paired with watercolor illustrations.

Adallyn PPT Font

Here’s a gorgeous example of a classical serif typeface that looks both modern and timeless, and comes in five different variations. It’s a stunning choice for headlines and titles and will give your PowerPoint presentation a professional and polished feel.

Daaron PPT Font

Elegant and minimalistic, this sans serif typeface is a perfect example of a modern font that can be used for anything! It includes regular, round, and bold styles, each of which supports a range of foreign language characters in addition to the complete set of basic glyphs.

Effren PPT Font

Effren is a powerfully simple sans serif typeface that can be applied to just about any purpose, from corporate presentations to personal portfolios and projects. It includes four different weight options, a full suite of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation, as well as corresponding web font and multilingual support.

Theodorlane Powerpoint Font

The Theodorlane hand-drawn typeface is a relaxed modern calligraphy font that’s ideal for adding a touch of authentic handcrafted charm to your Powerpoint presentation. Featuring bold lines and an artsy feel, it includes a range of ligatures, multilingual support, and an accompanying web font.

France Powerpoint Font

Inspired by classical vintage typewriter letters, the France typeface is a unique serif font handcrafted using pen ink scratches to give it an authentic texture. It’s great for any kind of retro or creative Powerpoint presentation, and includes upper and lower case characters as well as numerals and punctuation marks.

Blue Fonte Powerpoint Font

Blue Fonte is a multipurpose duo consisting of a funky handwriting script, featuring thin lines and elegant accents, and a block letter serif typeface that’s perfect for titles and headlines. This font duo offers a fun, creative contrast and is a perfect match for any kind of Powerpoint presentation.

Aesthetic Powerpoint Font

Next in our list of the best fonts for Powerpoint is the Aesthetic sans serif font, a cheerful handmade brush style typeface that’s great for adding a touch of rustic charm to your presentation. It looks best as a headline or title font, and comes with a full suite of basic Latin characters as well as numbers and symbols.

Halva Powerpoint Font

Featuring sophisticated, angular lines and subtle rounded edges, Halva is a highly professional sans serif font that will be perfect for a business or corporate presentation. Being super versatile and easily legible, it’s also one of the most user-friendly Powerpoint fonts out there.

Wensley PPT Font

The next option in our list of the best PPT fonts is Wensley, a stunning modern serif typeface with a classy, elegant appeal that’s perfect for impressing an audience! It pairs beautifully with script, signature, and handwriting fonts and comes with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation, as well as a range of Latin characters.

Metro Beardy PowerPoint Font

The Metro Beardy font is perfect for fun, lighthearted PowerPoint presentations that require a vintage aesthetic. Featuring a bold retro look with a subtle hand-drawn effect, it’s super easy to install and use, and is fully PUA encoded.

Jack Frost PPT Font

Jack Frost is a handmade style font with stunning characters. Made with a brush and high quality water-based ink, this font is ideal for name tags, handwritten quotes, product packaging, merchandise, social media, greeting cards, etc. It contains a full set of lower & uppercase letters, and a large range of punctuation, numerals.

Cronus PPT Font

The curvy structure and clean, even line weight of Cronus is sure to compliment a bold title or provide easy legibility for descriptive text. Vertical strokes make it an ideal choice to be the display font for your new app, powerpoint presentation, or company logo.

Anisver PPT Font

Anisver is an elegant sans serif typeface with touch of modern and simplicity. You can use this typeface for magazine cover, headline, wedding invitations, logo, powerpoint templates design, and many.

Fraction Speed PPT Font

You will be amazed by the above-featured product’ professional appearance. It’s a great choice for PowerPoint presentations; do check it out.

Prettywise PowerPoint Font

Last but not least in our selection of the best PowerPoint fonts is Prettywise, a vintage-inspired serif typeface that offers a beautiful retro vibe with a range of 30 ligatures and 100 stylistic alternates for you to mix and match. It also comes with ten different weight options!

Best Free Fonts For PowerPoint

If you’re low on budget, try using some of these free fonts to design your presentations.

Actay – Free Geometric Grotesque Fonts

Actay is a massive font family and in this free sample, you get access to 6 font weights from that family. They are all perfect for designing PowerPoint slideshows and presentations. And they are free for commercial use.

Kurye Light – Free Font for PowerPoint

Kurye is a modern font with a stylish letter design. It’s especially great for crafting unique titles for modern presentations. It’s free to use with your personal and commercial presentation designs.

Harmony – Modern Serif Font for PowerPoint

The elegant serif design of this font will add an extra level of elegance to your slides. This font is free to use with your personal projects.

Badger Valley – Free Font for PowerPoint

Badget Valley is a modern sans serif font with a creative style of letter design. It’s great for crafting unique headings and titles for PowerPoint presentations. The free version of the font is only available for personal use.

Breadley Sans – Free Font for PowerPoint

This font has a clean and clear design to improve the readability of your text on PowerPoint slides. The font is free to use in your personal projects.

The Main – Free Font Family for PowerPoint

The chunky and bold design of this font will fit in nicely with your PowerPoint presentations to create attractive titles and headings. It’s free for personal use.

Amidone Grotesk – Free PowerPoint Font

This font features a stylish letter design that is most suitable for crafting typography for modern and trendy PowerPoint presentations. It is free to use with personal projects.

Centra – Free Clean Font for PowerPoint

Centra is an extensive font family that includes a variety of font weights. It’s perfect for both title and body text designs in PowerPoint presentations. You can use it for free with personal projects.

We hope you liked our collection of the best PPT fonts. These typefaces are among the best fonts for PowerPoint presentations of any kind and will help you make your next pitch or project into a professional and visually appealing masterpiece that’s bound to impress your audience.

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How to choose the best fonts for PowerPoint Presentations

• November 10, 2023

PowerPoint is one of the most popular and versatile tools for creating and delivering presentations. Whether you are pitching an idea, teaching a lesson, or sharing information, you want your slides to be clear, consistent, and compelling. But beyond the storyline, one of the key elements that can make or break your presentation is the choice of fonts.

Fonts are more than just letters and symbols - fonts can help convey meaning, mood, and personality. They can also affect the readability and legibility of your text, which is crucial for keeping your audience engaged and informed.

In this blog post, we look at the different styles of fonts, recommendations of the best fonts for PowerPoint presenting vs printed reports and we share some hints and tips on how to choose the best font for PowerPoint presentations based on your audience and delivery method.

What are the types of fonts?

Before we dive into the specific fonts that work well for PowerPoint, its helpful to have an overview of some basic terminology and categories of fonts. Fonts can be classified into two main groups: serif and sans serif. Here's a quick explanation of each style:

• Serif fonts  have small strokes or lines at the end of each character, such as Times New Roman, Georgia, or Garamond. They are often associated with tradition, elegance, and formality.
• Sans serif fonts  do not have these strokes or lines, such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. They are often associated with modernity, simplicity, and clarity. They are also more readable on-screen than serif fonts, which can look blurry or pixelated.

There are also other types of fonts, such as script, decorative, or monospaced fonts, but they are usually not recommended for PowerPoint presentations because they can be hard to read (or distracting!).

What are the factors to consider when choosing the best font for presentations?

When choosing a font for PowerPoint presentations, it's important to consider the following factors:

• Readability : How easy is it to read the text on your slides? You want to choose a font that is clear and crisp, especially if you have a lot of text or small font size. You should also avoid using too many different fonts or styles in your presentation, as this can create visual clutter and confusion. Consider as part of this the intended delivery format - for example, will you be presenting the slides in an auditorium or emailing/ printing a deck for individuals to read through on their screen or on paper?
• Design : How well does the font match the theme and tone of your presentation? You want to choose a font that reflects your intended message and brand (or personality, for individual presentations). For example, if you are presenting a creative or playful topic, you might want to use a font that has some flair or fun. However for presenting a serious or professional topic, you might want to use a font that has some weight or authority.
• Style : How do you want to emphasize or differentiate certain parts of your text? You can use different font styles, such as bold, italic, underline, or color, to highlight important words or phrases in your presentation. However, you should use these styles sparingly and consistently, as too much variation can reduce the impact and coherence of your text.

What are some examples of good fonts for PowerPoint presentations?

Based on these factors, here are some examples of good fonts for PowerPoint presentations in 2023. 

• Sans serif fonts : These are fonts that do not have small strokes or lines at the end of each character, such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana. They are often associated with modernity, simplicity, and clarity. They are also more readable on-screen than serif fonts, which can look blurry or pixelated.
• Simple and clean fonts : These are fonts that have a clear and crisp design, without too much embellishment or decoration. They are also versatile and adaptable, as they can suit different themes and tones. Some examples are Verdana, Roboto, Fira Sans, and Montserrat.
• Fonts that match the font size : These are fonts that look good at both big and small sizes, without losing their quality or legibility. They are also not too thin or too thick, as this can affect the readability of your text. Some examples are Tahoma, Segoe UI, Georgia, and Bentham.

Suggested Fonts available in standard PowerPoint versions from 2007 onwards

There is an almost unlimited number of fonts available for download on the internet, that you could choose to use for your presentations. To keep things easier, we have focused on a list of fonts that are all available in standard PowerPoint.

Some of the simple and clean fonts great for presentations and available in standard PowerPoint:

• Calibri : Calibri is a sans serif font that has a modern and elegant look. It is the default font for PowerPoint since 2007 and it is very readable and versatile.
• Helvetica : Helvetica is another sans serif font that has a clean and sleek look. Helvetica is one of the most popular fonts in the world and it is very clear and adaptable.
• Garamond : Garamond is a serif font that has a vintage and classy look. It is very legible and stylish, as it has a distinctive contrast between thick and thin strokes.
• Gill Sans : Gill Sans is a sans serif font that has a friendly and playful look. It's very readable and expressive, as it has a lot of character and charm.

You can view and compare the fonts in this screenshot:

PowerPoint 2023 Font update including Aptos

In July 2023, Microsoft introduced Aptos as the new default font for PowerPoint. Aptos is a sans serif font that has a modern look. If you are a Microsoft 365 user, you will have access to Aptos from mid 2023. Users on older versions of Office will continue to have the fonts listed above. Aptos replaces Calibri as the default font for PowerPoint (but Calibri and the other fonts listed above continue to also be available in PowerPoint!).

Along with the Aptos introduction, Microsoft commissioned the design of an additional 5 fonts which have been added to PowerPoint, Excel and Word:

• Aptos : a sans serif font that has a modern look, which is being rolled out as the new default Office font for Microsoft 365 users
• Bierstadt : a sans serif font, designed to be more angular and precise than Arial with high readability in mind.
• Grandview : a sans serif font which has been specifically designed as a high legibility font for use in body text, on any device.
• Seaford : a sans serif font inspired by old-style serif text typefaces. While Bierstadt is more angular, Seaford is more organic.
• Skeena : a sans serif font inspired by traditional serif text typefaces. There is intentional contrast between the thick and thin in the strokes. Designed for body text in long documents and presentations.
• Tenorite : a sans serif font, Tenorite was designed to be an easily readable font at small sizes onscreen, with larger punctuation.

Suggested Presentation Fonts to download for PowerPoint

If you don't like the look of any of the fonts available in PowerPoint, you can also download additional fonts. Note that you will need to also embed any non standard fonts in a presentation if you are distributing it to others (refer to the next section for how to do this).

The following fonts are Sans Serif and Serif fonts which are modern and easy to read. They are not available in standard PowerPoint, however you can easily download them online and install them for PowerPoint.

• Lato : Lato is a sans serif font that has a modern and elegant look. It is very readable and versatile, as it comes in different weights and styles. Lato is recommended for both headers and body text in your presentation.
• Roboto : Roboto is another sans serif font that has a clean and sleek look. It is also very readable and adaptable, as it has many variants and styles. Roboto is recommended for both headers and body text in your presentation.
• Bentham : Bentham is a serif font that has a vintage and classy look. It is very legible and stylish, as it has a distinctive contrast between thick and thin strokes. You can use Bentham for headers or sub-headers in your presentation.
• Fira Sans : Fira Sans is a sans serif font that has a geometric and futuristic look. It is very clear and dynamic, as it has a wide range of weights and styles. You can use Fira Sans for headers or sub-headers in your presentation.
• Montserrat : Montserrat is a sans serif font that has a friendly and playful look. It is very readable and expressive, as it has a lot of character and charm. You can use Montserrat for headers or sub-headers in your presentation.

How to embed non standard fonts in PowerPoint presentations

As noted in the section above, if you choose to download a non standard PowerPoint font for your presentation, you need to embed the font in your presentation, if you plan to share the presentation electronically with others. To do this:

• With your presentation open, from the PowerPoint Ribbon, click the File  tab and then click  Options 
• From the left menu select the  Save  tab.
• The second last menu option is Preserve fidelity when sharing this presentation . Check the Embed fonts in the file  check box. We recommend also checking the Embed all characters (best for editing by other people) if you are intending for your presentation to be edited by others.

How to apply fonts to your PowerPoint presentation?

Once you have chosen the fonts that you want to use for your PowerPoint presentation, you need to apply them to your slides. Here are some steps to follow:

• Select the text that you want to change : You can select a single word, a sentence, a paragraph, or the entire slide. You can also select multiple slides at once by holding the Ctrl key and clicking on the slides in the left pane.
• Open the Font dialog box : You can open the Font dialog box by clicking on the Home tab, then clicking on the small arrow in the bottom right corner of the Font group. Alternatively, you can press Ctrl + D on your keyboard.
• Choose the font that you want to use : You can choose the font from the drop-down list in the Font dialog box. You can also choose the font size, style, color, and effects from the same dialog box. You can preview how the font looks like in the Sample box at the bottom.
• Click OK : Once you are happy with your font choice, click OK to apply it to your selected text.

You can also use themes and templates to apply fonts to your PowerPoint presentation. Themes and templates are pre-designed sets of colors, fonts, and layouts that you can apply to your presentation with one click. You can choose from the built-in themes and templates in PowerPoint, or you can create your own or download from online sources.

To apply a theme or template to your PowerPoint presentation, follow these steps:

• Open the Design tab : You can open the Design tab by clicking on it in the ribbon at the top of your screen.
• Choose a theme or template : You can choose a theme or template from the gallery in the Design tab. You can also click on the Browse for Themes button at the bottom of the gallery to find more themes or templates on your computer or online.
• Click on the theme or template that you want to use : Once you click on a theme or template, it will be applied to your entire presentation. You can see how it changes the colors, fonts, and layouts of your slides.

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9 PowerPoint fonts that work in all versions of PowerPoint

• PowerPoint Tutorials
• Presentation Design
• February 2, 2024

Did you know that not all PowerPoint fonts are safe to use?

By that I mean, not all fonts will properly display in all versions of PowerPoint. Instead, what will happen is, PowerPoint will replace your fonts with something else that might not actually work for your presentation (yikes!).

So, the question becomes, what is the best font for PowerPoint?  In this article, you’ll learn about the nine safest PowerPoint fonts you can use to ensure that your fonts display properly in all versions of Microsoft PowerPoint (Mac and PC).

Time Saving Tip:  If you are building a PowerPoint template, you can save a TON of time by first buying a professional template online, and then tweaking it to meet your specific client needs, instead of building everything from scratch yourself. To jump start your search, see my guide on the best professional PowerPoint templates online .

Table of Contents

[watch] safe powerpoint fonts that work in all presentations.

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NOTE: If you are reworking an existing PowerPoint presentation and need to swap out the existing fonts for the new PowerPoint fonts you want to use, please don’t waste your time and do this manually. Instead, first read our guide on replacing PowerPoint fonts on all slides .

PowerPoint fonts not displaying correctly?

If your fonts are not displaying properly in PowerPoint, it’s likely one of two things:

• You’re not using a safe standard PowerPoint font
• You’re using a custom font (see discussion below)

Let’s first address the first issue.

Although PowerPoint is supposed to be compatible across versions and installations, there are a few areas where PowerPoint it’s not as compatible as it’s supposed to be: fonts.

And this is true, even if you use the default fonts that come with Microsoft Office.

For example, if you use a font that isn’t supported by the computer that’s opening the presentation, that font will be substituted for the theme’s default fonts, most often Calibri.

And this may change the entire look and layout of slide and all of your text, like in this example:

If you’re only ever using PCs and PowerPoint 2016, for example, then I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

But if there’s a chance your presentation will be displayed on a computer using an older version of PowerPoint (especially pre-2010), or if the computer is a Mac, then you need to be careful of the fonts you’re using.

And chances are that you’re going to be in this situation, so please pay attention to this.

The best PowerPoint fonts to use

The best fonts for your PowerPoint presentation are ones that:

• Makes your slides look good
• Are ones that properly display on ALL Mac and PC versions of Microsoft Office.

These are what are commonly refereed to as safe fonts. They are safe in that they will work on any machine, and with any version of PowerPoint.

According to presentation design expert  Julie Terberg , “safe fonts are those that are common to most users and therefore will not be substituted when your PowerPoint file is opened with an operating system or Microsoft Office version that is different from your own.”

There are very few fonts that are safe across Mac and PC, and these are:

For a slightly more expanded list of safe PowerPoint fonts you can use, check out Julie Terberg’s article on safe fonts .

While these are restrictive, if you want to truly be compatible across all devices, those are the few you can use.

If you’re ever going to build a presentation with a risky font, what you should always do is test the presentation as if the fonts were to revert back to default. That way you know if would look okay in the event that the fonts didn’t carry over.

PowerPoint fonts to avoid

The fonts that are most likely to break your PowerPoint presentation are custom PowerPoint fonts . By that I mean, fonts you manually install on your computer (Mac or PC).

While custom PowerPoint fonts can look cool, the problem with them is, they will only display if someone else has them installed on their computer too (which they will not).

For example, imagine sending your client the most beautiful slide in the world with your custom font, only to have that font be replaced on your client’s machine by something hideous (as they don’t have your custom font installed). This happens all the time when designers send their clients presentations, so let’s not have that happen to you.

You can get away with using custom PowerPoint fonts if you convert your PowerPoint presentation into a PDF before you distribute. That’s because once your presentation is saved as a PDF, all the fonts are baked into the PDF itself as images (they will not change when opened on someone else’s computer).

NOTE: It can also be illegal if your font is copyrighted and if you’re the only one allowed to use it.

What are custom fonts in PowerPoint?

Custom fonts are fonts you’ve downloaded for free on the web, or they can also be fonts that you’ve purchased.

Here are some places we recommend for finding free custom fonts online:

• 100FreeFonts
• Urban Fonts
• Article: “The Best 100 Free Fonts”

For more suggestions, check out the section in our resource guide for best places find free fonts  here .

Here are some places we recommend for buying custom PowerPoint fonts:

• HypeForType

Using custom fonts is a great way to make your presentations stand out and look super cool.

Here are some examples of cool fonts, handwritten letter fonts, and modern fonts we’ve used, and sleek combinations of fonts:

Why you don't want to embed fonts in your presentation

One way to go around having to install custom fonts on all user computers, is to embed them.

However, we  D ON’T RECOMMEND  embedding them (ever).

Why? Simply because embedding fonts in PowerPoint never works very well, and some fonts won’t even let you embed them based on their licensing. It’s more likely to screw things up for you and leave you stranded.

The rule of thumb should be to avoid using custom fonts wherever possible in presentations that need to be edited by more than one or two other people.

If you have to use custom fonts, you can save your presentation as a picture presentation or convert your presentation into the PDF file format.

And again, test, test, test!

It can only help to make sure you know how your presentation will look on older versions of PowerPoint and on a Mac/PC.

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As a designer in LGR Presentation, I have to work every day in PowerPoint presentation project s from different brands. So I know what types of questions are you dealing with.

“What color palette will I use?” 

“What kind of style of typography?”

“Which fonts? What size?”

So many things to think about!

Let me show you how to choose the best fonts for PowerPoint and, also, give you some extra tips! 

Let’s dive into it…

How to choose the best fonts for PowerPoint?

First of all, you are not going to find here the PERFECT font for you. There is no perfect font whatsoever. It always depends on you and your situation.

For instance, Apple uses all the time the font Myriad Pro Semibold.

Because it is the best font for PowerPoint presentations?

They use it everywhere. It has become their font.

Choosing the font style prescribed by your company build your brand.  If you use the font style for everything, people will identify this font style with your brand.

Like Apple!

Let me show you now the 10 best fonts for PowerPoint.

Roboto is an effective font, without personality. Use it if you want to create a simple presentation.

For an elegant and minimalist style, opt for the Avenir font, especially if you have an innovative project.

Use it on larger font sizes and you will see the difference. Lato is a modern, elegant font that stands out from the crowd and shows off your style.

#4 CENTURY GOTHIC

Century Gothic specially designed for modern digital presentations. This font maintains a design from the 20th Century but with a x-height enlarged.

#5 GARAMOND

Garamond is a professional font, it is ideal for “academic” style presentations.

Georgia is a legible, modern font that gives a welcoming look.

#7 MONTSERRAT

A modern style, geometric simplicity in the letters, without a shadow of a doubt. Montserrat is a font that makes an impact!

Ideal to have thick letters in your titles and elegance in your texts. Raleway is a light and varied writing which is very appreciated with the Powerpoint tool.

#9 SEgoe UI

Well-known font used in Microsoft products to improve the user interface. It is ideal for professional PowerPoint presentations.

It has spaced characters that allows for easy reading of content. We advise to use it specially for headers.  

Segoe UI doesn’t have to be confused with Segoe Print or Segoe Script. These two are not recommended fonts for a presentation.

#10 VERDANA

As Segoe, this is a font with spaced characters which make it great to make clear and easy reading presentations. This typography is neat and personalized.

Serif or sans Serif for your PowerPoint fonts?

The font you choose can have a big impact on your Powerpoint presentation.

Serif fonts are perfect if you are going to print your presentation. They are pretty easy to read.

Sans serif fonts are better for digital presentation. They are moderns and elegants. The ones that we recommend to do a PowerPoint presentation that will appear on a screen. 

• Serif (a foot on the bottom edge of the letters, like this one), it will direct the audience’s eyes across the bottom line of the letters. It gives the public a lot of information that they probably not need at all. This will make the slides not easy to read and follow and maybe the audience will just give up.
• Sans serif (without foot), you will have a clean slide with it. The audience may find it hard to follow the line. This may seems to be an inconvenience, but if you manage to put just the necessary text and more visuals, the result will be great. A clean, simple slide.

What about the colors of your PowerPoint fonts?

I can advise you about a specific color or palette. It always depends on you, your company and where are you doing the presentation.

However, we have some guidelines for you to help you choose the best palette for your presentation.

Where your presentation will be displayed?

• Presentation displayed in dark room: use a dark background. You can’t use a light background in a dark room because your audience will feel that they are looking into a spotlight.
• Presentation displayed in well lit room: use a light background.  It is not recommended to use a dark background in a lit room, because the ambient room light will be reflected on the screen and then black will become grey.

Control where the audience focuses their eyes

How can you do this? It is easy.

Avoid putting a warm color next to a cold point.

The area where you want the audience to focus needs to be darker and warmer than the areas that surrounds it.

Use your brand color for your presentation fonts

It is always a good a idea to use the colors of your brand in your presentations.

To get the exact colors from your company’s logo, you can use this tool from Adobe.

At that site you need to upload your logo and the website will indicate you the palette of color that you need to use from that image.

The best fonts for PowerPoint for everybody.

If you are doing a presentation for a big crowd, you need to do it for everybody.

Consider color-blindness!

Learn about palette types and use it in your PowerPoint fonts

Use a complementary palette. 

Don’t mix colors without learning a little bit more about them.

Check our Color Wheel design to help you.

How to add new fonts for PowerPoint.

There are two types of fonts , those of Windows office (to be used in priority) and those that we download.

We usually download them from  Google font .

You only need to find the font you want by entering it in the search box.

  Select the desired style.

And then, click on Download family.

You will find the font in a ZIP file in your downloads, you just have to open and install them.

ATTENTION: You will have to close the PPT software completely and reopen it so that the new fonts appear in the drop-down list.

What fonts will you use for your PowerPoint presentation?

I’d love to hear what do you think about these fonts.

Specifically, I would like to know if…

Do you have a prefered font that you use all the time in your PowerPoint ?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment below!

P.S. : If you don’t feel like choosing a font and creating a new PowertPoint, you can always use our templates . Did you know that?

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Powerpoint - Font issues

I had my agency create a powerpoint template for my organization to use (we use both Mac and PCs). There is a font embedded in the presentation (Plus Jakarta Sans - a Google font) so that when the user opens the presentation for use, they don't have to download a custom font in order to use it properly. I came across a strange instance where it was opened in the App and it was displayed the font as symbols/almost a Thai looking language, and showed a yellow caution symbol beside the font drop down. This didn't happen to me, but to a colleague whom i shared it with. I can't seem to trouble shoot this, or know what would cause this issue given it hasn't happened before, both for people who have downloaded the font on their native system and for those who haven't.

Please help! This is causing huge headaches and time delays :(

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Replies (1) 

• Microsoft Agent |

Good day. Thank you for posting to Microsoft Community, and we are happy to help you.

To troubleshoot the issue, could you provide me some information below?

To make sure the issue if related with PowerPoint, please check whether it happens when you change to another font.

Please run the PowerPoint in Safe Mode. I noticed you mentioned your company provide PCs and Macs, so which devices have the issue? If it on Windows, please refer: Open Office apps in safe mode on a Windows PC - Microsoft Support . If it on Mac, please refer: support.apple.com .

Please provide me the screenshot of PowerPoint product information. File > Account > capture the screenshot of the product information.

To help you better, could you please send a sample file for us via OneDrive link so that we can investigate it for you.

Does the problem happen on this specific user or all the users?

Thank you for your understanding and time.

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