7 Ways To Use Typography To Make Your Presentation More Engaging

5 min readApr 16, 2019

Did you know that 46% of people can’t even make it through a simple presentation without losing focus?

That’s why I wanted to learn how to make a presentation that will captivate an audience.

So I turned to SlideShare and looked at the most viewed presentations.

After looking at hundreds of different authors, topics, and designs, I’ve assembled over 100 tips on how to design a compelling presentation.

However, no one has time to read that much content on Medium.

It would take like an hour to get through!

So I’m breaking the tips down into chunks of 7–10 related tips each, over the next few months.

Now if you want to read all 125 presentation tips and check out just as many examples, click on the link below:

120+ Best Presentation Ideas, Design Tips & Examples

In this first edition of Presentation Design Tips, we are going to focus on font and typography tips only.

So let’s get started!

1. Use a Font That Is Large and In Charge

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If you are presenting to a small group or a packed stadium, make sure your audience can see your text! Use a large and in charge font that can be read from even the nosebleed seats.

Honestly, you really never know where your unique presentation will be seen. It could be seen in a conference room or conference hall, and everything in between.

Be ready to present almost anywhere with a bold and easy to read font.

2. Use More Than One Font Weight On Your Presentation Cover Slide

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Just like you would never use one font on an infographic, you should never use just one font on your presentation. In this presentation example from HubSpot, they use a bunch of different font weights to add emphasis to keywords and ideas.

As you can see, they use a bold font on the presentation cover to bring attention to Steve Jobs name. This makes it easy for the audience to know what your presentation is going to be about from the beginning as well.

3. White font over photos just works

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There is a reason that you see so many quotes or sayings in a white font that are then overlaid on an image. That it is because it just works in so many situations and the text is very easy to read on any image.

If you do not believe me, look at the slide deck example above where they use a white font with a few different fonts and about 100 images. Plus the presentation template is chocked full of other tips on how to create a winning slideshow.

4. Highlight key facts, numbers and percentages

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Surprising percentages have the ability to excite and shock an audience. To make the percentages on your slides even more impactful, present them in a different color or font than the rest of the text.

In the presentation example above, Contently uses that exact tactic to bring more attention to key numbers.

5. Use a combination of creative font pairings

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The creator of this slide deck uses at least 10 different types of fonts. And it looks fantastic because they know that one font choice is boring.

But this does not mean that you should use a bunch of random fonts–pick font pairs that play well together and keep your fonts choices for different types of information consistent throughout the presentation.