Fonts for presentations and slides
Sans-serif and slab-serif families that stay readable on a projector or a shared screen, with strong bolds for slide titles.
Quarterly results
Slides are read at a distance, at an angle, on a projector that washes out contrast, or shrunk into a corner of a video call. Fine details do not survive any of that. Thin strokes disappear against a bright background, and tight letter spacing closes up.
So favor sturdy, open letterforms: low stroke contrast, wide apertures and a large x-height. Then look at the heavy end of the family. A slide usually has one message, and a clearly bold title weight, well separated from the body weight, does more for a deck than any decoration. Families with many weights let you build that hierarchy with one typeface: a heavy title, a regular body, a light for large numbers. Width is useful too. A condensed cut, or a width axis, lets a long title stay on one line instead of wrapping. Slab serifs are worth considering for titles, since their block serifs stay visible where delicate serifs would not. Keep body text at 24 points or more, and test the deck on the worst screen you expect to present on.
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Poppins
Circle-based letters with a high x-height and nearly even strokes suit large slide text; nine weights with italics.
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Work Sans
Nine weights with italics on one variable axis, from thin captions to heavy slide titles.
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Roboto Slab
Nine upright weights of slab serif for titles that need more presence than a sans.
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Bitter
A slab serif made for comfortable screen reading, variable from Thin to Black with italics.
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Archivo
A width axis from 62 to 125 lets a long title be narrowed to fit one line.
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Barlow
Low-contrast letters shaped by road signs, in nine weights with italics.
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Nunito
Rounded terminals and eight weights with italics give a deck a softer voice.
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Oswald
A condensed gothic that fits long slide titles into narrow columns.
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Libre Franklin
A tall x-height keeps bullet text legible and the Black weight gives titles mass; a grotesque in nine weights with italics.
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Red Hat Display
Tight spacing, a large x-height and seven weights up to Black, drawn for display sizes.
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Epilogue
Fairly wide letters with generous round bowls and a tall lowercase, in nine weights with italics from Thin to Black.
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Lexend
Made to reduce visual stress in reading, which helps on text-heavy slides; nine upright weights from Thin to Black.
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Scope One
A light slab serif commissioned for slide presentations and tuned for titles at 14 points and up; one weight, so keep it large.
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Prosto One
A wide, low-slung grotesque made for logos and presentations, in one style with Cyrillic; a title face only.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about fonts for presentations and slides
Can I embed these fonts in a deck I share?
Open licenses permit embedding fonts in documents and presentations. If the software cannot embed them, export a PDF, which carries the fonts with it.
How many fonts should a slide deck use?
One family with several weights is usually enough. A second family can mark a different kind of content, such as quotations or code, but more than two tends to look unplanned.
What is the smallest readable size on a slide?
As a working rule keep body text at 24 points or larger and never go below 18. Faces with a large x-height read bigger at the same point size.