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Typography: The art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed.

PowerPoint is a flexible design app. Sometimes it is not easy to accomplish design ideas as in other apps. As example, text kerning. PowerPoint does not use the design industry term “kerning” and the feature is not easily accessed.

For example, here is some simple, all caps, text on a slide.

To add some visual design, letter colors are updated to the TLC color scheme (RGB).

In preparation for the next effect, the opacity is lowered to

Now the actual kerning, what PowerPoint labels CHARACTER SPACING. Select the text, open the FONT dialog, view the CHARACTER SPACING tab. Change the spacing option to CONDENSED, which essentially is negative spacing (so the 20 pt used is really -20 pt).

The result is the text slightly overlaps and the transparency overlap creates a dynamic visual.

Done. Custom typography styling created all within PowerPoint and remains editable text.

Download the editable slide HERE.

 

– Troy @ TLC

Typography: The art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable, and appealing when displayed.

PowerPoint is flexible. Like many design applications, text can be more than bullet lists of black text on a white background. One aspect of graphic design is creating visually engaging layouts with just text. As example, here is a slide one of the TLC Creative design team created – all in PowerPoint.

1. Add text to a slide. Boring start, but now we know what we are working with.

2. To start the layout, the first section of the quote was set with a new font, ALL CAPS, and new color

3. The final word of the quote has some more extension PowerPoint styling. Starting with using a custom font and applying a text gradient fill.

4. The custom font was a purposeful selection because the font family includes an outline version. The “everything” text box was duplicated, changed to the outline version of the font, set to a purple outline and white fill. Stacked, the two text boxes look great!

5. Last is adding the name as simple, small text in same blue as the top line.

6. As a final design flare, a background image was added and sent to back.

Done. A complete graphic design text layout, completed in PowerPoint.

– Troy @ TLC