Type and image

Check at real viewing size

Judge hierarchy, spacing and crop at the size people will actually watch, phone included.

Left, a large frame in an editor with a clear heading and a small line. Right, a phone with the same film at small size, where the small line is crossed out as unreadable.in the editor: fine phone: too small judge it at the size it is watched

Takeaways

  • Look at the film on a phone before it ships.
  • No universal minimum size exists; test instead.
  • Edit or move the copy before shrinking the type.
  • Use negative space before reducing the message's scale.
  • Kern big type optically.

What it means

A line that is comfortable on an editing monitor can vanish on a phone. There is no universal minimum pixel size, so the only honest test is to look at the film at the size it will be seen. When type crowds, edit the copy, give the line its own beat or add empty space before shrinking it, and kern large type by eye, because equal gaps look uneven.

In a RasanAI film

A viewing-size pass checks the crop, the optical letter spacing, the hierarchy and the empty space at display size and at phone size, and the interface target is checked for visibility there too. Font-size cuts made after copy grows are flagged with the offer of shorter copy or a new beat.

Origins and sources

Practitioners on type contrast, optical kerning and negative space. None gives a minimum size, and a research paper on static reading speed (238 words a minute) is not a motion limit.

Evidence: Studio practice, and single practitioners.

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