Best Fonts for Presentations - What Actually Works When Presenting?

Typography & Fonts
1

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.

2

DM Sans is hard to beat as a default. It doesn’t distract, it doesn’t get in the way, it reads on every screen I’ve ever used it on.

The Google Slides vs. PowerPoint point is valid - web font substitution in Slides means you need to embed or use Google Fonts exclusively. Mixing local fonts is a disaster waiting to happen.

3

Raleway thin weight is beautiful in previews and terrible on projectors. The thin hairlines get completely eaten. Medium or Bold weights only if you’re presenting in a room.

Best fonts for presentations really should have a “room size” qualifier attached.

4

Adding: Outfit and Inter are both excellent for presentations. Inter was designed for screens specifically so its metrics are optimized for exactly this use case.

Also the variable font support in Canva means you can do more with a single font family than with two separate choices.

5

The “2 typefaces max” rule is the one I have to enforce with every junior designer. They come in with 4 fonts and wonder why the deck feels chaotic.

One serif + one sans-serif, or two sans-serifs with strong contrast in weight. Either works. Three or more never works.