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)