5 free font alternatives so you never use Calibri again
We hate Calibri.
This post was originally published in the Slidebean blog. Here: http://slidebean.com/blog/font/calibri-alternatives-free
Calibri is one of the ugliest fonts ever invented by mankind, I hold it up there with other design fails such the infamous Comic Sans MS. Beyond that, Microsoft decided to make it the default font for all its Microsoft Office Suite, so we’ve been forced to see it almost anywhere.
Using Calibri for a presentation speaks almost too much about you, especially if you call yourself are a designer of any sort. I can read that you didn’t bother to find a replacement font for your document, or even worse, that you thought it looked good. We’ve made sure that Calibri is nowhere to be found in our presentation software.
But fear not, here are some amazing alternatives so you never have to use Calibri again. We’ve integrated all of these in our presentation tool for your design pleasure.
Open Sans
This has become one of the most widespread used fonts of the decade and Google owns a little bit of this credit to the startup community. It’s a great and simple Sans-serif font that adapts as its being integrated on websites all over the world. I’m sure you have recognised it.
The trend these days seems to be associated to lightweight fonts, so using that Open Sans-300 is also a good way to go if you want to look trendy.
Alégre Sans
Alégre Sans is a beautiful, sans-serif capitalised font that we find particularly attractive for headers. In a way, it’s a beautiful an graceful version of the well-known Impact. It is of course, not recommended for body text on your slide, as an all-caps font can come across as aggressive to your audience if you are not careful.
Poiret One
A round and elegant lightweight sans-serif font with a Retro and Art Deco style. I find it particularly interesting if you want your presentation to stand out without being over the top. Using some vintage and/or rounded shapes on your slides will of course be a plus.
Poiret One was designed by Denis Masharov and is available for download as part of the Google Fonts package. Still, it’s not a very common choice so I don’t believe anyone will recognise it.
Related Read: Times New Roman Alternatives
Helvetica Neue
Of course you might complain that the world is a bit tired of Helvetica, and I might have to agree; this is the font used by Apple for most of the iOS 7 interface, by the US Government in most of their forms and the NYC Subway, if you hadn’t noticed. Nevertheless, Helvetica is still worldwide accepted as one of the most beautiful fonts ever designed.
It represents a slight but notable improvement from Helvetica and includes a bunch of new variants, including the lovely Helvetica Neue UltraLight, Helvetica Neue Thin and Helvetica Neue Medium.
Although Helvetica is a paid font owned by Linotype, it’s available for free on every Apple Computer and that is why it’s made it to the list. Sadly, you can still spot some Mac-users using Calibri.
Raleway
Another Google Font, this one actually represents a great free alternative to Helvetica Ultralight. It was designed originally as a lightweight typeface and later evolved to add new, bolder variants.
I’d recommend sticking somewhere between Thin (100) and Normal (400), as the 700+ thinkness versions don’t look that good after all. Using lightweight fonts on presentations is great if you want to add large titles or short amounts of text (which is what you always aim for anyways).
Raleway is our font of choice for the Slidebean layout ‘Polygon’ and in many of our pitch deck templates.
Enjoy your presentation making. Please don’t ever let me see you using Calibri again.
