The PowerPoint® Blog

Choosing the right typeface for a PowerPoint template can really affect the impact it has on the message and your audience. If you dare to go beyond the Microsoft PowerPoint default font Aptos for your presentation design, you must consider which font will work, not only creatively, but technically as well.

Julie Terberg, a wonderful presentation design expert and Troy Chollar’s fellow PowerPoint MVP, recently released a must-read “white paper” covering the many factors to consider when making typography decisions for Microsoft PowerPoint templates and presentations.

The TLC Creative presentation design team has all read “Choosing fonts for PowerPoint templates – A guide for making informed font decisions”  and here are some of our top take aways:

Font Display on Mac vs. PC

Fonts on a Mac system vs a Windows system use different display technologies. If you look closely, there is a difference in how a font is displayed. Each OS uses a different process to render the font, and the letterforms on a Mac look subtly thicker than those on Windows. Most people wouldn’t notice the difference, but you can see it when compared side by side. This is something to be aware of, but there is not any way to control this.

The slight font difference also extends to printing, as you can see in this side-by-side PDF comparison:

Custom Foundry Fonts

“Foundry Fonts” are custom fonts, or fonts not supplied by Microsoft. The thought behind using Foundry fonts makes sense if used within a company or organization as it’s an opportunity to use a unique typeface for branding; however, in most scenarios the cons outweigh the pros. Every computer will need the custom fonts installed to display the font. There are distribution, purchase and licensing considerations, such as Foundry Fonts often require purchasing a license for EACH user.

In this scenario, in addition to needing to distribute and install the font on all computers, the purchase process is added to the technical hurdles. Sometimes there is a corporate, or Enterprise, license in place allowing the font use by all employees. It is also important to note that the purchased license could be for the entire font family, or just a specific style of that font. Plus, some licenses are only for temporary use and can require renewals to license for continued use. The key takeaway; be aware of the installation and licensing needs for all non-Microsoft fonts.

Font Compatibility

Are Microsoft and Google becoming friends with compatibility fonts? Microsoft has added some of Google’s common fonts to its Cloud Fonts library! Lato, Montserrat, Open Sans, and Poppins are a few Google fonts now automatically supported by Microsoft M365 PowerPoint. The caveat is the computer must be online. PowerPoint will detect these specific Google fonts when the presentation file opens, will automatically download, install, AND be available to PowerPoint without restarting the app. In testing, some of our design team saw this successfully happen with Lato, but others had issues (e.g. the Lato Google Font did not install, and the presentation substituted a Microsoft font). These are exciting possibilities, but still something to keep an eye on.

Embedded Fonts

Custom fonts can really enhance any PowerPoint design. One solution Microsoft has added to PowerPoint is the ability to embed custom fonts directly into the PowerPoint file. This is not new technology for other software. As an example, the ability to embed fonts has been available for PDF documents for many years.

Why are embedded fonts important? Because any non-Microsoft font that is not recognized by the computer, PowerPoint automatically substitutes with a standard Microsoft font, meaning you cannot control how text on slides really displays because substitute fonts may add bad line breaks, have font display sizes change and other display issues. So, in theory, embedding custom fonts into a PowerPoint file allows the fonts to travel with the file, be automatically installed, and will always display on the slide as designed.

If embedded fonts worked (spoiler alert, we are not endorsing embedded fonts for our projects), this would be the most convenient way to use custom fonts in a presentation and assure when sharing the presentation, as everything would display as designed. However, as Julie points out in the whitepaper on fonts, there can be issues when non-Microsoft fonts are embedded. In our testing, we have concluded that embedding fonts is not a best practice for TLC Creative with the current technology iteration.

Here’s a great, but technical, tip from the white paper. If the goal is to embed a font into a presentation, confirm that font is embeddable (controlled by the company that developed the font and set the file permissions and licensing options). The font file property settings list if the font has the option to be embedded. On a Windows computer go to C: > Windows > Fonts. Right-click any font and open the Properties dialog box.

On the GENERAL tab, confirm the Read Only and Hidden options are not checked. On the DETAILS tab, you can see the FONT EMBEDDABILITY property. Font developers generally set one of four permissions; Restricted, Print and Preview, Editable, or Installable. For PowerPoint to be able to embed a font correctly, the property of the font must be Editable or Installable.

Variable Fonts

Variable fonts are the future, and Microsoft has started to implement this newer font file type. A variable font is a font file that stores a range of design variants all within one file. Other font file types like .TTF and .OTF use separate files for each style a font has available (e.g. italic, bold, thin, heavy, etc.). Variable fonts not only contain all the font styles in a single file, but the Variable Font file type expands the number of font styles and specialty glyphs that a font can have – by a lot!

Variable fonts are still not recognized by most apps. Everything about them

Microsoft currently has implemented at least two variable Cloud fonts: Bahnschrift and Selawik. Bahnschrift offers 13 variations for use in PPT, while Selawik only offers 4. Each is a single file on your computer. If installed as an OTF file format, it would be 13 separate files.  Selawik is also a single file. If installed as an OTF file format it would be 4 separate files, one for each of the 4 styling/weight options the Selawik font offers.

FYI: Photoshop CC embraces variable fonts and not only recognizes the multiple font style options in the single Variable font file, but it allows full control with a “weight” and “width” setting offered in the Character panel to truly customize how the characters of a Variable font are displayed for that project.

Hopefully one day Microsoft will update their capabilities to allow for full use of variable fonts in PowerPoint. Currently, it is better to steer clear using variable fonts in PowerPoint as PowerPoint is unable to access most of the styling options and none of the display customization options.

Our Conclusion? Understanding Fonts Is Essential.

To learn more about these take aways the TLC team highlighted, and font choices in PowerPoint, download the “Choosing fonts for PowerPoint templates – A guide for making informed font decisions” whitepaper at Julie Terberg’s site here. And special note: the whitepaper is also available in a French language version.

Thanks to the TLC Creative presentation design team for their input and expertise for this post:

• Font Display on Mac vs. PC (by: Jake Seelye)
• Custom foundry fonts (by: Christie Best)
• Font compatibility (by: Lori Chollar)
• Embedded fonts (by: Mike Zinniger)
• Variable fonts (by: Amber Prince)

Hi! It’s Amber from the TLC Creative presentation design team. As the back-to-school season is here, there is excitement in the air, especially in my household. This year is particularly special for me because my first-born is starting kindergarten! It is a huge milestone, not just for him, but for our entire family. Watching him prepare for this new chapter has been a whirlwind of emotions; excitement, nostalgia, and a touch of nervousness (okay… more than a touch). He’s so excited to start Kinder and make new friends, and I’m excited to watch him learn and grow as a Kindergartner.  

To celebrate back-to-school time, we here at TLC decided it would be fun to create “Back-to-School” PowerPoint animations – using only PowerPoint’s Morph transition. Morph is such a fantastic tool for creating smooth PowerPoint transitions and animations to bring slides to life. 

My back-to-school animation for this series features 8-bit style graphics inspired by Mario, one my son’s favorite video game characters. While his current favorite game is Super Mario Odyssey (Mario Kart 8 a close second place), I have a soft spot for the classic Super Mario Bros. 3 which I played as a kid with my older brother.  

To bring my idea to life, I prepped the slide art in Adobe Illustrator and imported PNGs into a PowerPoint presentation. TIP: the asset export feature in Adobe Illustrator is a huge timesaver for projects like this. You can add the individual pieces you’re needing to animate to the asset export panel. You can then export all images at once as PNG files in a couple of clicks.

I envisioned the animation opening to feel like The Simpsons opening scene clouds. So, on the first slide I added all of the cloud images huge, then let Morph magically size and move them into place on the following slide creating the feeling of swift forward movement.  

Huge clouds outside of the slide… 

…resolve into the normal sized clouds on the next slide: 

The 20 second animation consists of 20 slides, with auto transitions on all but the final slide. This is because an auto transition would end the show in black, not stop the slide show on the final slide. Most of the movement in the 20 seconds of animation is my “son” jumping through the scene collecting school supplies before heading into school – using only the Morph transition for all movement.  

Click play for the full, PowerPoint Morph, animation in action!  

Be sure to come back and check out what my co-workers back-to-school animation creations are in the posts to come! 

This is a “textbook” – big, bulky, heavy, but filled with knowledge that will be referenced again and again over the years. The brain science of how to make a presentation memorable is a pretty deep read but makes so, so much sense and is a game changer in slide design thinking. The hundreds of inspiration-filled slide examples alone make this book a worthy resource.  

We had a wonderful time talking with Dr. Carmen Simon on my podcast about this book. Find episode 204 of The Presentation Podcast in major podcast apps or listen HERE. 

-Troy @ TLC 

I am really excited to be presenting at the annual Presentation Summit which is approaching quickly with 2 attendance options. The in-person conference is October 20-23, 2024 and the virtual conference is November 3-6, 2024.

What makes this talk extra exciting is that it’s part 2 of the “Backstage Pass” talk I gave in 2020. Four years ago, I covered a plethora of real-life PowerPoint presentation project examples, including repurposing a confetti animation into a bubble animation (and glitter animation and coffee beans animation). I also showcased a San Diego ComicCon teaser video that was created entirely with PowerPoint slides.

For the 2024 edition of this talk, the TLC Creative design team and I have been busy diving into current projects and searching our archives to pull out really cool examples showing some of the unique ways we use PowerPoint in presentation design, and I have a fresh plethora of examples!

This year includes a chart that was converted into a roller coaster metaphor and expanding a crazy long timeline seamlessly across a dozen slides to make the content presentable. I am also setting aside time to pull apart some of these examples so we can see how they were created. Hope to see you in October!

Lori @ TLC

The Presentation Summit event is almost here – mark your calendars! October 20-23, 2024 for the in-person conference and November 3-6, 2024 for the virtual conference.

Troy is busy consolidating his ideas and notes into what promises to be a fun and fast-paced session – all on how to make the PowerPoint workflow better and faster with a range of PowerPoint 3rd party add-ins.

For example, demo #5 will show how Troy and the TLC Creative team create optimized individual slide decks from a master meeting presentation, just by using a combination of 4 PowerPoint native tools and add-ins.

But you will have to be there to see everything included in the “optimized” part of the process in the final individual slide decks

Microsoft PowerPoint templates are amazing. Among all the presentation software options, the PowerPoint template has the most options to preset and pre-configure slide content.

THE PROBLEM

There is one template customization that baffles us at TLC Creative when we see it – and we see it several times every year. Let’s set the stage. PowerPoint’s custom color scheme implementation is not perfect. But when set up correctly, it is a valuable tool in making slide design and edits faster. A custom color scheme assists in keeping slide content consistent and on-brand, quick and easy.

For example, default PowerPoint files start with the Microsoft provided default color scheme.

THE REAL PROBLEM

The ability to customize the color scheme for slide templates is wonderful. But for this “behind-the-scenes issue” I am going to focus on the left 4 colors. Let’s call them Light 1-2 and Dark 1-2.

For this behind-the-scenes issue, we are really focused on the White and Black colors in the Light and Dark preset values. Here is the deal, if there is NOT a true white and true black defined in these preset values, the formatting headaches are immense.

Unbeknownst to anyone who uses the Light/Dark for other colors, many of the features that make a PowerPoint template amazing become a huge issue when formatting slides if the template does not contain true white and true black.

WHERE WOULD THIS BE A PROBLEM?

• The Light and Dark preset colors are used in charts.

• The Light and Dark preset colors are used for the inserted text color.

• The Light and Dark preset colors directly impact the behind-the-scenes PowerPoint “Background Style” (most people are not familiar with this but change it, and suddenly slide colors do not work!).

• The Background Style determines the overall master template background color. This is because it simultaneously adjusts the font colors to either white on a dark background or black on a white background. If white and black are removed from the color scheme this will cause an issue in master font contrast legibility.

• Because the background style uses the Light/Dark colors, it is easy – and frustrating – to create a template that does not have enough contrast between the background and the text.

• Charts in Microsoft PowerPoint use the Light/Dark colors for axis labels, grid lines, legends and chart title text. There is no option to program PowerPoint to use other colors. Without black and white in the template preset colors, inserted charts are generally barely legible, and require lots of customization to make them work.

THE SOLUTION

This problem is not a problem if every Microsoft PowerPoint template keeps a true black and true white in the custom color scheme (in the Light/Dark presets). The solution is: don’t create a problem by removing what is already there. (Please note that all of the slide examples above are poor examples!)

CONCLUSION

Creating a PowerPoint template that does not have a true white and a true black in the Light/Dark color scheme colors definitely creates a behind-the-scenes formatting issue. This is the final post in this series on “Behind-the-Scenes PowerPoint Issues.” Everyone on the TLC Creative presentation design team hopes these 10 posts are helpful, educational, and ultimately let us see fewer of these issues and formatting frustrations.

~ Thanks to Christie on TLC Creative design team for highlighting this behind-the-scenes issue