Some Data on the Current Use of PowerPoint – Font Choices

This post is an excerpt from “Visu­al Log­or­rhea – On the Preva­lence of Slideu­ments”. In order to get an impres­sion of the cur­rent use of Pow­er­Point for pre­sen­ta­tion design, 1.500 pre­sen­ta­tions found on the inter­net have been ana­lyzed. Read the full sto­ry here.

Font Choices

Most of the char­ac­ters have been for­mat­ted in a font which has been or is Pow­er­Point default (Times New Roman, lat­er Ari­al and now Cal­ib­ri, togeth­er 69.2%). 95% of all text found on the slides is for­matted in a font which is deliv­ered with the oper­at­ing sys­tem (Microsoft Windows​¹ or Apple Mac OS​²) or Microsoft Office. We can assume that the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fonts about exact­ly fol­lows what was the default at time of cre­ation (of the pre­sen­ta­tion or the presen­tation tem­plate it is based on). In con­clu­sion, most of the presenta­tions or their respec­tive tem­plates might not con­form to cor­po­rate stan­dards (which do not base on default fonts in many cases).

Only 3% of all text is for­mat­ted in a font sup­plied by 3^rd par­ties – anoth­er indi­ca­tion that there are almost no spe­cif­ic design cus­tom­izations being done (and that prac­ti­cal­ly nobody wants to pay type foundries or font design­ers for their work – or at least look for a suit­able free font). Font choice is large­ly not rec­og­nized as a way to dif­fer­en­ti­ate; in par­tic­u­lar for recent pre­sen­ta­tions cre­at­ed using the very dis­tinc­tive Cal­ib­ri font, this is more than evi­dent: “You can­not use Cal­ib­ri and expect to cre­ate a ‘Pow­er­Point that does not look like Pow­er­Point.’”​³

In sum­ma­ry, com­pared to the ubiq­ui­ty of text, the impor­tance of font choice appears to be aston­ish­ing­ly underrated.

This post is an excerpt from “Visu­al Log­or­rhea – On the Preva­lence of Slideu­ments”. In order to get an impres­sion of the cur­rent use of Pow­er­Point for pre­sen­ta­tion design, 1.500 pre­sen­ta­tions found on the inter­net have been ana­lyzed. Read the full sto­ry here.

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