16. Font Size Matters
When it comes to fonts, size matters a lot. The font size needs to be big enough for users to read the text without strain. And it’s not just older individuals who need fonts to be bigger—young people also complain when font sizes are too small to read.
Some fonts can be the same size, but look bigger, due to the x-height. The x-height is literally the height of the small letter x in the font family. Different fonts have different x-heights, and as a result, some fonts look larger than others, even though they are the same point size.
Figure 16.1 shows how the font size and x-heights are measured.
Figure 16.1. How font size and x-height are measured
Some newer font families, such as Tahoma and Verdana, have been designed ...
Get 100 Things: Every Designer Needs to Know About People now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
