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.)
My favorite presentation would probably be Verdana but for some reason I think I'm the only one using it here in our office. Most of my officemates, use Calibri especially on output files and reports.
Calibri is pretty good, although if people are still on Office 2003, there's a good chance they won't have it. Verdana is fairly standard across al platforms and installs.
"Century Gothic is to Justin Long’s Mac as Arial is to John Hodgman’s PC." – my favorite quote of the day!
Nolan,
You write about Franklin Gothic being a standard font on a pc, I see only Franklin Gothic Medium on my Windows pc: is this the font you are referring to? Isn't it a bit thick and bold?
Thanks for all your useful tips.
I like using Franklin Gothic Medium in conjunction with Franlkin Gothic Book. The latter is the lighter version which I would suggest as the regular text-weight font. Usually both fonts are present, but if you only have the Medium weight and you feel it's too chunky, I would stick with using it as a title-only font.
Thank you Nolan. My old Windows pc has many Franklin Gothic fonts, while the new one with Windows 7 and Office 2013 just has the Medium. I think Microsoft should be adding fonts, not taking them away, wouldn't you agree?
The whole font issue on OS installs is a complicated one. There are so many packages and decisions and issues with licensing that it's nearly impossible to figure out why anything gets done the way it is. If you wanted to purchase book it's not expensive:
http://www.fonts.com/search/all-fonts?searchtext=franklin+gothic+book&SearchIn=all-fonts