Been building a lot of slide decks lately and I’ve developed some strong opinions on the best fonts for presentations that nobody seems to write about honestly.
The rules everyone ignores:
- Projectors destroy thin strokes. Anything below 1pt optical weight at 14px becomes invisible on a presentation screen
- Sans-serif dominates for body. The only exception is when you’re deliberately evoking editorial/print
- Line spacing is more important than font choice. Most presentation fonts fail because spacing is 1.0 instead of 1.3-1.5
- Maximum 2 typefaces per deck. 1 heading, 1 body. That’s it.
My reliable list:
- DM Sans - clean, versatile, readable at all sizes. Best all-rounder for corporate work
- Plus Jakarta Sans - slightly more personality than DM Sans, excellent for tech brands
- Bricolage Grotesque - bolder personality, great for slide headers
- Raleway - classic choice, still solid for creative industries
- Nunito - the “friendly and approachable” option for education and non-profit
What are you using? Especially want to know what works well in Google Slides vs. PowerPoint - rendering differences are real.