What is the average font size for a magazine

Where is it measured and why are the letters of a Times typeface bigger than those of an English cursive font even though you have entered the same point value? The web abounds with font size guidelines for students and other target audiences. For example, some universities still prescribe which typeface Times New Roman and point size 12 pt to use for a dissertation which does not necessarily contribute to the legibility of a thesis.

Many people are unsure when it comes to font sizes. And this is quite understandable given the lack of concise and understandable guidelines on this subject. High time to shed light on the matter. Different units of measurement were around over the years and centuries: The Didot point, a modified version based on the Fournier point, was the standard in the world of typography for a long time. So if you enter a 10 pt font size in Microsoft Word or Adobe InDesign, you define that your font will have a size of 3.

In theory at least. In manual typesetting, the body height is defined by the height of the lead type or metal sort on which the actual font face, the printing surface of the type, is moulded. It is surrounded by blank or empty portions of the letterform, the so-called counters. When Gutenberg set a 12 pt font, it was the metal type and not the printed letter that had a vertical height of 12 points. Hence, the body height is generally bigger than the printed glyph.

In the age of digital type, we no longer work with lead type. An obvious outlier is Wilson Miner screenshot below , who uses a massive font size of 48 pixels for his headlines. His website is a special case, though, because all of his posts have extremely short titles, only a few words. Do you remember about seven years ago when Web designs had tiny, barely readable elements, and body copy was set to 8 pixels in Tahoma? Small font sizes are out, and more and more modern designers are turning to large font sizes.

From our sample size, we saw a clear tendency towards sizes between 12 and 14 pixels. Overall, the average font size for body copy is 13 pixels. We noted as one would expect more and more attention being paid to the smallest typographic details. Dashes, quotes, footnotes, author names, introductory text and paragraphs have been carefully set, with optimal legibility in mind. Type setting is usually very consistent, with a lot of white space, leading and padding. Typographica uses a large font size for the introductory paragraphs of its articles, and then reverts to a normal size for the rest of text.

The overall value, then, is 1. This means that when you have chosen a font size for your body copy, you may want to multiply it by 2 to get your heading font size. Another option is to use a traditional scale 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 21, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72 or the Fibonacci sequence e.

Leading or line height will always depend on your chosen font size and measure or line length. In general, the longer the measure, the longer the leading should be. More appropriate would be for you to use a relative unit, such as an em or percentage value, that determines the relation between leading and measure and between leading and font size.

AIGA is a perfect example of optimal leading. Its font size is In fact, Is it too bright? This is called the texture of body text and it should be optimal, neither too dark neither too bright.

Try out some different point and leading sizes, create columns, fill them with text again, print and compare. See which ones look better. There are no rules and the best result will be the one that looks optimal. Read the text in the columns and if you can read it with a nice flow and without interruption you have made it.

Reading comfort depends on the ratio of type size to line length to line spacing and they all have to be in balance and you are the one that is setting this comfort for the reader so choose wisely. Tags: body , column , copy , featured , font , length , line , magazine , size , text. Category : Typography. I have one question do the font in the magazine have to be sett as one size for the hall magazine?

If we are talking about main body copy, then yes, it should be set to one size for the whole magazine. They have been using it as main typeface for 40 years. Today it is still widely used in book publishing.

So, yes, obviously it is great type for body copy. I enjoyed it. I have a question thats more about the headings and paragraphs. For example, if I am designing a 3 col layout, each col with a heading and paragraph and one heading extends on two lines how would I go about position that vertically with the other cols? I am sorry I am not following exactly what you mean. Can you share some link with preview of your example. As you can see there a 3 columns each having a heading.

My question is what would be the appropriate way to design the headings so they look symmetrical? Right now since the column two header is wrapping it seems to throw it off. Wrap column headings 1 and 2 to be consistent?

So if I am right you will have three text columns with headlines above each. The problem is that the heading in the second column is way too long. IMHO the best would be to rewrite the headings so that you have the same number of lines for each heading. Two lines would be just fine. Although all of this depends on the design of the rest of the page. You have to look at the whole picture, but if the columns are alone on the page, same line length for headings would be best option.

Do all the articles in the same magazine need to be in the same body font or can some be san serif and some be serif? Well, body copy should be the same. But, small text blocks that are not part of main body copy, can be in different font and in different size. Using the same font styling for body copy gives consistency which gives seriousness to the publication. In instances where Times, Garamond or any other standard body-copy serif typeface is too wide to accommodate the amount of text required to be used in a publication, is there a recommended narrower san-serif font that would be acceptable for most readers?

Yes, Helvetica is a great option. Although for a longer body copy I would suggest some serif type. Condensed fonts tend to read harder when used for long blocks of text. It depends on a lot of things, the least being the particular typeface you are using. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Maeve G Maeve G 4 4 bronze badges. Good on pointing out that the font used makes a big difference to both the point size and leading required for readability.

The link is now dead, I assume it is this page now: introvisualcommunication. Vincent Vincent I agree. Eight point is for footnotes and legal type, not body copy. Open Sans, which you mentioned, has such a massive x-height that it's quite legible at 8 point much more so than, say, Helvetica or Myriad. It requires a healthy dose of leading at any size, so it would require as much room as, say, Myriad at 9 pt.

It's also not that comfortable for long text in print. James Earnshaw James Earnshaw 1 1 silver badge 8 8 bronze badges. Lucian Lucian Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile.