SEAL Team 6 raid on Baghdadi home cancelled due to Calibri font use in PowerPoint

I can remember setting up my first brief as a young SGT. I was coming up with SGT's Time Training and asked my Platoon Sergeant to help me go over it. Keeping in mind all the awful death-by-powerpoint briefings I been in before, I was determined to not make those mistake.

The biggest tip I got during that process is you don't want to make the class read your slides. If you are presenting something that they can read then why are you are there? My Platoon Sergeant at the time was very supportive of the "KISS method" when it came to PowerPoint-based briefings and I'm so thankful for the tips he gave me. Thankfully, font wasn't too much of an issue.

I remember back in 2005 when I was in command in Germany, we got a new brigade commander, an O6 that I had previously worked for at Corps, prior to taking command...the guy was awesome...a no-nonsense colonel who wanted to spend his time with the troops, as opposed to sitting in meetings, and when he did have to be in a meeting he HATED PowerPoint and HATED foo-foo presentations...he was a white slide with black bullets type of guy...no graphics, no funky transitions, no weird fonts or colors, and the shorter the better. Well, he was coming up to visit my battalion and my BN CDR was losing his mind and making all the commanders and staff put together this very detailed presentation which was the complete opposite of what the new brigade commander would go for, and when I tried to provide a little insider knowledge I was shut down and simply told to do the slides. In the end we had an extremely LONG presentation which our S3 packaged up as a hard copy in a binder, as well as projected on the conference room screen, all in anticipation of wowing the new brigade commander. The day of his visit came and the BN CDR ushered him into the conference room where all the staff and commanders were waiting, along with the presentation, and the BDE CDR did not even sit down...he simply flipped through the first couple pages of the binder, looked at the BN CDR and said, "Well Rob, this is a real pretty slideshow, now let's go talk to some Soldiers." I almost felt sorry for the BN CDR at that point...almost.

At CENTCOM, the font for all briefings was to be Ariel, color was to be Blue (255). My color acuity isn't that sharp, blue is blue... the O6 that ran current ops could spot a blue 254 at first glance and when he did, the veins on his neck and forehead would bulge as he screamed and threw a tantrum.