Why I suggest you choose a boring font for your PowerPoint slides

Recently I�ve read a number of articles or online comments that exhort presenters to abandon boring fonts like Arial or Calibri. The argument is these fonts are overused and instead, you should search for and use a cool font that makes you stand out. One article even suggested what search term you should use to locate an appropriately cool font.

This may be a good idea for a main stage conference speaker who has complete control of all the technology parameters and will never have these slides shown on a different computer or e-mailed to anyone else. In my opinion, it is bad advice for the vast majority of presenters who deal with the real-world situation of having to present on different computers and e-mailing their presentation as a follow-up or to those who couldn�t attend.

For the presenters who live in the corporate arena, choosing a cool downloaded font is a bad idea. Why? Because you run the risk of your text being unreadable or gibberish. Here�s why I say this. When you use a downloaded font, it resides only on your own computer and doesn�t travel with the presentation file unless you�ve specifically set the option to do this (hands up if you know where this option is hidden). When that presentation arrives on another computer, PowerPoint doesn�t recognize the name of the cool font and so it substitutes another font it does know about. You don�t get to choose the substitute font, it does it for you.

And what happens to your carefully designed slides? One time I saw it select a font that made most of the text run off each slide and text boxes ran on top of each other, making the presentation look like a mess. Another time PowerPoint selected Webdings as the substitute font and all I saw was gobbled gook. Is that what you want a key decision maker to see when they open your presentation? I didn�t think so.

So my suggestion is stick with a boring font like Arial or Calibri. When your presentation arrives on another computer, it will look exactly like it did on your computer. Will the recipient of the file think poorly of you for using a boring font? If your message is well crafted and supported by persuasive visuals, I don�t think they will even notice.