Text size for social media graphics

brunel

New Member
I'm currently assisting my local Toastmasters Club by creating a series of graphics for social media, namely Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. They usually consist of an interesting photo and some text. Each one is sized 1200 x 680 px, which seems to work well. I've had feedback that some of the text is too small, and that people can't read it on a phone (without zooming in). How small should I go? The headline text is typically around 60pt, the body copy around 19pt. I don't want to make it too large as the contrast and hierarchy will be lost. Thanks.
 
Px not Pt. There are no rules. You trial and test - and always on a phone. But 12px should be as small as you go when the image is 300px wide.
 
Px not Pt. There are no rules. You trial and test - and always on a phone. But 12px should be as small as you go when the image is 300px wide.
One pt equals 1/72 inch.
And websites typically display at 72ppi
- so 1pt = 1 pixel.

Technically.

The headline text is typically around 60pt, the body copy around 19pt. I don't want to make it too large as the contrast and hierarchy will be lost. Thanks.
Sounds reasonable - you'll have to do some testing though. I wouldn't go below 16pt px

This is a good read
 
One pt equals 1/72 inch.
And websites typically display at 72ppi
- so 1pt = 1 pixel.

Technically.


Sounds reasonable - you'll have to do some testing though. I wouldn't go below 16pt px

This is a good read
Just to annoy/confuse people doing the work, phones have this pixel ratio (iirc) setting where they can have 1080 pixels across (which is actually quite common on high end phones) but it actually registers as 540 or less in some cases.... so you're actually using '2x2 pixels' for 1 pixel.

Having said that I'd have thought 19pt would be fine in most cases unless the user is blind or something... maybe it's the choice of font?

@brunel can you put up an example image, it might make things a little easier
 
As others have suggested, reduce and raise the size and check it
manually yourself. However, the best size that will work on the
phone will be 15px. However, the better is to check it yourself.
 
Thanks for the advice. I'm using Roboto for the body copy, no option to use anything else as that is the font that aligns with the branding. Not sure if I can upload an example here as the images are bigger than 1mb. I've worked out size 20 pt equates to 26.6px.
 
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