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The writing on the wall
March 31, 2004
By Julie Hill
Our guess is that most presenters don't pay as much attention to the fonts they use in their electronic slides as they should. As long as they're readable and look OK, they figure, what else is there to consider?
As with most things in the digital universe, the answer is plenty.
It would be nice if you could just find a font you like and go with it, but electronic slides (such as those created with Microsoft's PowerPoint, Corel's Presentations or Sun's StarOffice) have their own quirks and limitations, so – unfortunately – just any old font on your computer won't do. Different fonts have different physical characteristics, make different technical demands on your equipment, and have different aesthetic qualities. Furthermore, for PowerPoint and other presentation applications, some fonts definitely work better than others, especially in a professional setting.
Fortunately, font science isn't particularly complicated. Knowing a few basic rules for font use on electronic slides can help any presenter create more-professional-looking slideshows, as well as avoid the potential headaches and embarrassment of poor font choice.
The following are the top 10 rules graphic designers use when choosing fonts for electronic slides. We'll also discuss some of the nitty- gritty technical stuff you need to know if you decide to (gasp) buy and install a new font on your system.
Top 10 font rules for electronic slides
The coming of OpenType
What makes a font appear jaggy around the edges onscreen?
How do I load a font into my system?
Top 10 font rules for electronic slides
Rule No. 1
Use the branding font if available
If you are presenting to your own company or an outside client, seek out and use the "branding" font. Having a custom-made or adopted company font is becoming a standard part of the branding process, says Tim Morey, director of Account Services at e21 Corp., a multimedia design firm in Fremont, Calif. "We design for a lot of startups, and now not only do they want the business envelopes and stationery, they also want the PowerPoint template as part of the company branding package." If the branding package includes a font, you should use it.
Rule No. 2
Use a sans serif font
Sans serif fonts – fonts with no artifacts at the end of the character points, have proven to be a boon for electronic presenters, because text blocks on a slide are usually short and sans serif letters look cleaner when projected onto a screen. Deborah Barrett, a business professor at Houston's Rice University who teaches MBA students the basics of slide design, tells students to use the sans serif font Arial for electronic slides. "It looks cleaner and crisper on slides," she says. "You are using fewer words, so you don't need the serif to make the connection between words in the same way you would in a [printed] text document."
Rule No. 3
Use a common font to prevent cross-platform woes
Barrett cites the universality of the Arial font and its variants (Arial Black, Arial Narrow, etc.) on both Macintosh and Windows computers as another hidden blessing. "If you need to transfer your presentation to another machine, and if that machine does not have your font, it will try to replace it as best it can, but often it will throw all your slide material out of position." Consequently, common fonts such as Arial, Tahoma or Verdana provide a small insurance policy against cross-platform incompatibility. However, if you must switch between platforms, it never hurts to check your slides for any cross-platform inconsistencies or font issues. Even if the destination machine has and uses a version of Arial, its font file can be slightly different and may redraw your font and affect your slide design.
Rule No. 4
Size fonts according to the presentation environment
A font isn't any good if your audience can't read it on the slide. Most designers say you should use a size between 20 and 24 points for body text, and anything above 28 points for title text. According to Mark Spangler, creative director of Hopkins, Minn.-based Spangler Design Team and a professor at the St. Paul (Minn.) College of Visual Arts, the best way to judge appropriate font size is to know the room in which you will be presenting. "Is it a large room with multiple attendees? Or a conference room in which you are presenting across the desk. It's really important to determine this, because your environment will dictate how you design your slides and the fonts you will use."
Rule No. 5
Only two fonts on a slide
Most designers balk at using too many fonts on a slide, and most suggest not using more than two different fonts. To get around this limitation, Rice University's Barrett suggests choosing a font that has a large "family," because "you can vary the font in size, or italics, or make it bold."
Victor Win, senior art director at e21 Corp., adds that when choosing a font family, don't forget to consider whether you need other characters beyond letters. "Make sure the font you choose has the particular special characters you might need, such as registration or copyright symbols."
Rule No. 6
USING ALL CAPS IS BAD, so is underlining
In an effort to make a big, bold statement, some presenters use all caps on slides, but this isn't advisable. "All caps read slower, and when they are reversed out of a particular color on the background, they read even slower," says Spangler. Even worse is the use of underlined words on slides, he says. It just isn't done (or shouldn't be, anyway).
Rule No. 7
Color plays a major role
The color of the text and the color of the background sometimes interact in unpleasant ways – red text on a blue slide, for instance, creates what Barrett describes as an annoying fuzziness that should be avoided. When the value (relative lightness or darkness) of two colors is similar, shapes or text in one color over the other color can appear to vibrate. For PowerPoint slides, Barrett suggests sticking with darker backgrounds and using light fonts for contrast (for example, blue background with yellow text, or dark-green background with light-green or yellow text). Contrast and readability are key.
Rule No. 8
Variety is less
All designers have horror stories of the slides they've seen packed with text and bullet points that seem to have no focal point whatsoever. And they're everywhere. "Less is more," are the words Mark Spangler advises presenters to live by. "The less you have on a slide, the greater the chances are that your message will break through the clutter." Spangler also advises presenters to identify the most important thing to be communicated, throw everything else out, then express it using as few words as possible. Another advantage to this approach is, according to Spangler, it prevents the presenter from simply reading the slides out loud to the audience – something presenters should always avoid.
Rule No. 9
Printed text reads better in serif
If printed handouts consist of any sizable amount of text, the presenter should consider using a serif font, such as Times New Roman, to make the handouts more readable. But if the handouts are just printouts of the presentation's slides and notes, says e21's Victor Win, it's perfectly acceptable to print them as-is, with their sans serif font. "Usually, with today's technology, what you see on the screen is printable. If you would have asked me four or five years ago, I would have said use a serif font, but now just about everything can be printed and it will be readable."
Rule No. 10
Test it
If you are not sure a font will work for a presentation, or if you'd like to try something new, all designers recommend testing the font beforehand. On a slide, type the entire alphabet of the font's uppercase and lowercase characters, then display it from a projector. Does it look OK? Notice the characteristics of the font, such as style, size, spacing, etc. One of the downsides of Microsoft PowerPoint, for instance, is the tracking between the letters – there may be big spaces between a font's characters that can look bad on a slide. Jaggies, too, are a chronic problem, so make sure the characters' lines appear clean and natural.
The coming of OpenType
It used to be that a font would consist of two or three different files resident on your computer: one for showing text on the screen, another for printing, and sometimes another for PostScript printing information on high-end printers. But that changed with the development of TrueType fonts by Apple Computer in the mid-1990s. Subsequently adopted by Microsoft, TrueType fonts have become the de facto standard for consumer computing. TrueType fonts contain all of a font's information in one file, and are scalable.
However, the latest amalgamation of fonts, called OpenType, has grown out of a partnership between Adobe and Microsoft. This new standard is scalable, contains all the font's necessary information to display and print, and the same font file can be used on Macintosh and Windows computers, eliminating many of the cross-platform problems that can plague fonts.
According to Harold Grey, Adobe's group product manager for type, OpenType also contains other advantages for design professionals. "There is increased language coverage in one file, and more layout features for advanced typography, such as small caps, old style, swashes, designs that harken back to a truer typographic tradition." In 2003, Adobe released its entire font collection, known as FontFolio (comprising 2,200 Western fonts and 31 Japanese fonts), in OpenType. According to Grey, OpenType is quickly moving onto Mac and Windows computers via continual application development and OS upgrades. "You're probably using them already," he says. (To find out, open your system's font folder and look for the OpenType logo.)
What makes a font appear jaggy around the edges onscreen?
One common cause of jaggy-looking fonts is the practice of creating a presentation on one machine, then transferring it to another – a laptop, usually – that doesn't have the display font loaded into its system, forcing the new computer to substitute another font. This can happen with fonts as common as Helvetica, says Rice University's Deborah Barrett. "Helvetica is originally a Mac font and if you move it to another system it can do some bizarre things, with bullets in particular," she says.
To prevent this from happening, designers such as e21's Victor Win suggest sticking with common sans serif fonts and presenting the slideshow from the machine on which you created the slides. Or, if that isn't possible, make sure the fonts are loaded on the presentation computer.
How to embed a font file in a PowerPoint presentation
In Windows versions of PowerPoint: In the tools menu, choose options and then from the Options menu click the save tab.
Under the Save options, select embed truetype fonts check box. Click OK. In Macintosh versions of PowerPoint:There are no options to embed fonts in Mac versions of PowerPoint. Microsoft's best advice is to use fonts that are familiar to both platforms, such as Arial.
How do I load a font into my system?
According to Harold Grey, Adobe's group product manager for type, the arrival of Macintosh OS X and Windows XP has taken some of the complexities out of loading up new fonts. "It's now very easy to install fonts. There's no great magic to it," says Grey. "All [new operating] systems now have a fonts control panel or font manager dedicated to making installing fonts easy."
Note: Although the following methods work well if you intend to load a only handful of fonts into your system, if you plan to load and manage more than a few, it's recommended you look into purchasing a font-management program, such as Extensis' Suitcase for Windows or Suitcase for Mac (www.extensis.com). These programs can help you load and manage multiple fonts without affecting your system's performance.
If you work on a machine running Microsoft Windows Me, 2000 or XP: From the Start menu, go to SETTINGS » CONTROL PANEL (in XP you can find the control panel in the Start menu directly).
Locate the Fonts menu. Double-click it to open it.
Under file in the Fonts menu, choose INSTALL NEW FONT.
Browse and locate the font file you wish to load and click OK when finished.
If you work on a machine running Macintosh OS 8.6 through 9.2:Simply drag the font file over the icon of the System folder. It will automatically insert itself into the Font folder within.
If you work on a machine running Mac OS 10.1 or 10.2: Strangely enough, fonts are kept in five locations on a Mac OS X system. To install fonts in the main font folder, drag the files onto the Fonts folder located in System folder. But to determine the location of other fonts and who can use and install them, you should visit Apple's support Web page (www.apple.com/support) and do a search using the key words Fonts, OS X to access information outlining how and where fonts are installed.
If you work on a machine running Mac OS 10.3 (Panther):Apple's 10.3 Panther OS comes with a Font Book application that handles installation, font previews, searches, and the disabling or uninstalling of fonts. The one-stop area for font management can be found in the Applications folder.
Julie Hill is managing editor of Presentations magazine.
Originally published in the February 2004 issue of Presentations magazine. Copyright 2004, VNU Business Media.
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