How to PowerPoint

Unless you’re a typographer fonts aren’t usually that exciting.  But they’re everywhere and it’s important to understand how to use them on your slides in PowerPoint.

Since I don’t really like to bore people, I’ll leave the nerdy font lesson to my buddy, David Anderson.   So, here are a couple really useful font tutorials that will help you build more cohesive PowerPoint presentations and slides.

Use a Single Type Font Family

Click here to view the tutorial.

Alignment Tutorial

Just in case you’re not completely bored, here’s a great tutorial on aligning numbered decimals for consistent spacing.

Click here to view the tutorial.

It’s not really a matter of right or wrong as it is a matter of how the fonts you use in your PowerPoint files communicate with your audience and contribute to the overall tone and visual design of the slides.

When using fonts, you kind of have two considerations. 

• Is the font going to be legible?  Can people read and retain the information.
• What does the font’s design communicate?  How well does it support the tone and design of your slide content?

The Rapid E-Learning Blog has a good post on How Fonts Take a Starring Role in Your E-Learning Courses.  While the focus of the post is elearning, the information is just as relevant to any use of PowerPoint.

It’s a good post with an interactive exercise that illustrates how fonts can do more than display text.

The Rapid E-Learning blog had a good post on how to create your own handwritten fonts.  I covered it in a bit of detail on a recent post about adding visual interest to your slides.

As soon as the font post was published, I got a bunch of emails asking how to install the fonts.  So here’s a quick tutorial that shows how to install new fonts to your PC.  You’ll see it’s pretty easy.

Click here to view the tutorial.

Here are the basic steps:

• You can right click on a font, and select install. 
• Or open your control panel.  Look for the fonts folder.  Then drag and drop the font to the folder.  It should install automatically.

Here are three posts I did for the Rapid E-Learning Blog where I showed how to build out some ideas in PowerPoint.

Build a Puzzle

Build a Puzzle Animation in Just a Few Simple Steps walks though the process of building a puzzle sequence that reveals information as the learner advances.  There’s a tutorial as well.

Build a Cool Slide Template

Here’s How I Built That PowerPoint E-Learning Template walks through the process of building out a multi-colored template.  You can also download the PowerPoint files via the attachments link in the tutorial.

Create Your Own Handwritten Fonts

Over 100 Free Handwritten Fonts gives you links to a bunch of free fonts.  You’ll also learn to create your own for free.  Check out the tutorials.