Reader small image

You're reading from  101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inMay 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803234885
Edition2nd Edition
Right arrow
Author (1)
Will Grant
Will Grant
author image
Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant

Right arrow

Use a Sensible Default Size for Body Copy

Your customers will be reading a lot of text across your app or site, so how big should the type be?

The days of fixed-size type are long gone. Most browsers on desktop and mobile will let users scale type up and down, switch into “reading mode,” and apply system-wide accessibility settings, like large type and high-contrast colors.

With that in mind, all you’re doing here is setting the default type size that appears when the product is first opened. Ideally, the type should be big enough to be readable, but not so big as to overwhelm the user or take up too much space in a crowded view.

Body copy in 16px, with a 1.5 line height and “auto” or “default” character spacing, is usually a safe bet and a good default for the vast majority of your users.

This can be achieved easily with the following CSS:

body {
    font-size: 16px;
    line-height: 1.5;
}

Trying to set your...

lock icon
The rest of the page is locked
Previous PageNext Chapter
You have been reading a chapter from
101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition
Published in: May 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803234885

Author (1)

author image
Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant