#Minimal desktop web browser pro#

You’re not printing out a single-spaced Word document you’re writing for people sitting a couple feet from their decade-old monitors.

18px – a better font size to start with.16px – absolute minimum for text-heavy pages.Now, each font is different, even at the same size, but we’re talking: If folks are reading for long periods of time, be nice: don’t make them strain their eyes. Long story short, for text-heavy pages, you want larger font sizes. The “Contact” page on a vanilla blog is still interaction-heavy. The “About” page of a crazy web app is still text-heavy. Keep in mind that both will probably be useful. Each has slightly different concerns, so I’ll handle them separately. Your Facebook feed is an interaction-heavy page. Need an example or two? This page is a text-heavy page. There may be plenty of text on the page, but it’s not stuff you read straight through like a book. Apps that involve more hovering, clicking, searching for an item in a list or table, editing, typing, etc. There is very little in terms of interaction – perhaps just clicking a few links. These are pages where the primary purpose the user has on the page is to read. When picking a base size for a desktop website or web app, you can break down most designs into one of two types:

#Minimal desktop web browser pro#

iOS’s default font size is 17px SF Pro and secondary font size is 15px (more on iOS styling)ĭo you need to copy them? Nope – but it never hurts to have a baseline to compare to.Material Design’s default font size is 16px Roboto and secondary font size is 14px (more on Material Design styling).It never hurts to know what the biggest design systems in town are doing. Be familiar with Material Design and iOS standards So use Figma Mirror or Sketch Mirror or whatever app makes sense for you, but view your designs on-device. As a beginning designer, I was shocked almost every time I opened on mobile a page I designed on desktop. I can’t recommend this practice highly enough, since the feel of an mobile app design on your laptop screen is way different than when you’re holding it in your hand. The gold standard of choosing mobile font sizes is to view your designs on an actual device. Always view your designs on an actual device In addition, when text is less important, you want to style it so that you’re clearly communicating the lesser importance – often using, say, a lighter shade of gray (something about 70% as strong is a good place to start). I do NOT recommend going down just one font size, since then it’s too easy to confuse with normal text. – use a size a couple notches smaller – such as 13px or 14px. Secondary text should be about 2 sizes smaller than your paragaph textįor secondary text – like lesser labels, captions, etc. It can look awkward to have larger form control text than paragraph text ☝️ 3. This is a strong reason to make the body font size 16px or larger as well. You can read his article on the auto-zoom phenomenon here. Video or it didn’t happen, right?: Animation courtesy the dashing Ste Grainer. If your text inputs have a smaller font size than that, iOS browsers will zoom in on the left side of the text input, often obscuring the right side and forcing the user to manually zoom out after using the text box. If you’re designing a website or app that can be viewed on mobile devices, there is only strict rule: Use a text input font size of at least 16px. While there’s some subjectivity to the best primary font size to use on the page, the next rule is more hard and fast. On the other hand, you can be much more liberal with exploring sizes larger than 16px, but in particular if (A) you have a text-heavy page or (B) a font that is particularly difficult to read at a given size (like Futura above).Consider going smaller if you have (A) have an interaction-heavy page or (B) a font with particularly large, easy-to-read characters (like Proxima Nova in the image above).Ultimately, you want the body text on your phone (when held at a natural distance) to be as readable as the text in a well-printed book (when held at a natural – usually slightly farther – distance). (Let’s assume you’ve already picked a great font, which is pretty much one of the two cheat codes for good design) By “default” or “primary”, I mean the size that most paragraphs, labels, menus and lists are set to. Understanding that different fonts can be more or less legible even at the exact same size, 16px is a good place to start when choosing your default mobile font size. Instead, I will give a few guidelines (with rationales) to help you in your own design process. Picking font sizes for a mobile site is not an exact science. First we’ll cover mobile guidelines, then desktop guidelines. In this post, we’ll cover what font size to use for a responsive website. Quickly navigate to other chapters: Intro You’re reading Font Sizes in UI Design: The Complete Guide.