My Favorite Presentation Font

Like most graphic designers, I have thousands of fonts on my computer that I’ve collected over the years. And, like most graphic designers, I probably only ever use a half dozen of those fonts on any regular basis. When it comes to presentation, I use even fewer.

At Edelman, we use Franklin Gothic as it’s one of the more professional-looking fonts included in our standard PC build—even though it should not be considered a “standard font.” (When distributing presentations digitally, we nearly always convert to PDF, which eliminates any issues if the receiver does not have Franklin Gothic.)

But when I’m not using Franklin Gothic or the dreaded Arial (which is often an unfortunate necessity), my favorite font is Century Gothic.

Like Arial and Times New Roman, Century Gothic is a standard font available on nearly all PCs and Macs. Unlike those first two stalwarts, however, Century Gothic has maintained a relatively fresh, contemporary feel. It feels modern and clean with just the right amount of stylization. 

Century Gothic is to Justin Long’s Mac as Arial is to John Hodgman’s PC.

It is also on the wide side, which I like to think forces shorter headlines and text blocks (unlike Arial Narrow which seems to beg for overwriting.)