How far away will your audience be from the text. There is quite a bit of research and a general formula that uses values of visual angle and the distance from the eye to the object to determine the actual physical size of text for people with normal or less than normal vision. You can search the IxDA archives or I'll post it tonight. Age makes a difference and you may want to design not for the average, but for a range that includes older adults.
Chauncey On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 6:50 PM, Marty DeAngelo <[email protected]> wrote: > I know that there was a discussion on this list a while back, but I'd > love to get a more recent update as to what people feel is the best > 'standard' font size for an average audience. We are currently in > a bit of a debate with a client about their 'standard' font size. > > > Their guidelines dictate using 14px Arial / 13px Verdana for content, > which we feel is too large. We feel that a 12px Arial / 11px Verdana > standard is more reasonable to most users (in essence, using the 75% > base font adjustment from the browser standards and then using ems > from that point forward). > > I've done some research of different usability sites and found that > MOST agree that a standard of 75%/0.8em/12px seem to be the best > size, but it is by no means unanimous. But I trust the opinions here > to help me prove my point or theirs. > > P.S. We do use font-sizers on all of our sites, and they run at > settings of 1.0/1.2/1.5em (effectively 12px, 14px, 18px), which I > think takes care of the normal gamut of needs; in my opinion, most > users who need a font size larger than that already know how to get > it and don't need us to intervene. > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
