Presentation limitations
Have you ever opened a presentation someone sent you, only to find the text formatting too messed up to read? Chances are, the person who designed the presentation used a custom font you don’t have.
Custom fonts are a great way to make your slides more expressive, but they can cause serious problems when you try sending your presentation to someone else.
Presentation applications (i.e. Keynote and PowerPoint) don’t embed fonts into presentation documents. This means if you’re making a presentation you plan to send to several people, it’s best to use only universal fonts.
In the example below, I designed a simple slide using the custom font Trixie. The version on the left shows what the slide looks like on my computer, a computer with the font installed. The version on the right is the exact same slide, but on my friend’s computer, which does not have the font installed. Notice the difference?
If you use a PC, you don’t have much to worry about — almost all of the fonts that came installed on your computer are universal. If you use a Mac, you have to be a bit more careful. You have several great fonts on your machine that your PC brethren might lack.
Using type effectively is an art and a great way to make your slides more expressive. For presentations you’ll only deliver from your computer, feel free to go nuts using any fonts you want. But for presentations you plan to send to other people, remember to be careful with your font choices.
Note: PowerPoint 2007 for the PC does, in fact, allow you to embed custom fonts into your presentation. First, click “Save” and then click the “Tools” button. Select “Save Options“, and then click the “Embed fonts in the file” check box.
21 great fonts
If you’re interested in learning more about custom fonts, the link below highlights a collection of 21 of the most used fonts by professional designers.
It’s definitely worth checking out if you want to experiment with using a font other than Arial or Calibri in your next presentation.
InstantShift (via Monoscope)
What are the drawbacks to copying and pasting the entire slide? Sometimes, I design creative slides then copy the entire slide using the “Print Screen” button on my keyboard and paste it onto another slide. This turns creative fonts into pictures, eliminating the compatibility issue. I’ve noticed, though, it makes the file size much larger, and sometimes, when I upload to the web, the slide may appear a bit pixelated. Is this a viable solution to using special fonts, or should I stick to universal fonts?
You bring up a great point. In some instances, exporting all of the slides as images and then reinserting them into a new presentation is a good solution.
The only drawback to this method is that the text becomes uneditable and you obviously can’t use any text animations. These aren’t necessarily big drawbacks, since you might not want the text edited or animated. It just depends on your style. In fact, I often use this method when posting presentations publicly, to ensure they aren’t changed.