Minimum font size... urgent.

[Geir]

Yo good people of CA and graphic designers in particular.

I'm working on a cd cover for a friend. I have tryed googling this, but come up empty and somewhat confused. My question is: What is the minimum font size one should use in a cd cover? In the booklet I am using Times New Roman. On the backside of the booklet (what you see when opening the case) I am using Arial on the copyright info. What would be well readable in these fonts as a minimum size?

[LuckyDevil]

I don't think there really is a standard for minimum size. But i usually don't go any lower than 10 pt unless i really have to fit something in. Print out a mock up and see if it looks good to you size wise because it also will mess with the overall composition depending what size and placement you choose.

[Geir]

Ta Devil. Yea I have heard the 10 piont "rule" somewere. I'm trained as an fine artist, and not as a graphic designer so fonts is something I have minimal knowledge about. But when I look at cd covers the font in the Copyright etc... always seem smaller then 10. And as comp wise I need it as small as poss.
The compony that are printing this wants the cover in 1000x1000 px 300 dpi and jpeg format. Dont know if this helps. Unfortunatly I cant talk to them myself. I have to let it go theough my friend. Something to do with membership stuff.

[LuckyDevil]

hmm 1000 x 1000 px at 300dpi is the same as 3.333 x 3.333 inches. Which proportionally to the size you have the text would take up a lot of real estate at 10 pts. So go lower if you feel like you need to in my experience people start having trouble reading letters smaller than 6 pts. and by people i mean me . I am guessing all your stuff is digital so make i would make different versions with different font sizes, that way you can be safe.

Good luck

[Geir]

Ta for your help Devil. This really helps me out. I have gotten my my friend to give me absolutly everything of info that has to do with printing. Course he had seen wrong about the format. They did want it in PDF not in jpeg. I thought something was fishy there[]

[rossidzhar]

We're taught at college (Shillington College) to never go below 8 point for bodycopy. General rule of thumb is between 8 - 10 for body. I've found anything in this range looks a little more 'professional'.

[katyorr]

I think around 8-10 is acceptable. 12 point is huge, a lot of people don't realize this. It doesn't look good on posters or anything smaller than a poster.

[Geir]

Rossidzhar, what do you mean by body and bodycap (a bit of a language barrier)?

[rossidzhar]

Hey, sorry - body / bodycopy are the same thing. A couple of definitions:

Bodycopy -

"Text matter that comprises the major content of an article or publication other than mastheads, headlines, sub-heads, call-outs, charts and graphs."

"Main text area of the document"

[Geir]

Ah -I suspected it was that. Thanks

[Geir]

Ta for the tips guys. I went with 6 on the copyright info, 9 the body text and both in Arial. I think that should be fine. I will post the finals in here as soon as I'm allowed

[ConstableMurtis]

The smallest font size I've ever used on CD artwork was 5.8, only because the band wanted lyrics for 10 songs spread out amongst 2 panels of a digipack, over top of the picture of the band, but not covering their faces

Hurray for breaking the rules for people who don't know better!

[Mr.Thorne]

What font on images?!?!?!?!! That isn't allowed!

I think you got all the advice you need but to reinforce it Devil is 100% correct and seems to know the math better than i do.

[Geir]

What font on images?!?!?!?!! That isn't allowed!

What do you mean by this?

[TheDirtSyndicate]

bah. i do design for a living: if it looks right it is right.
thats my motto.
i;ve printed out stuff with the font around 5pt and its been fine. you always have to do a print test. ALWAYS.
never just assume its going to be right. EVER.
EVER EVER EVER.

[Geir]

Ta The dirtsyndicate. You can see the finished result here.
Unforunatly I didnt have a way to do a print test first this time (but I TOTALLY AGREE with you) so thats why I posted this. But the actual cover (got the cd a month ago) looks good. Font worked great, so thank you guys for the advises

[Wes_design]

Out of curiosity why did you choose Arial, and not Helvetica, Swiss 721, Univers, or even Futura?

Arial is a cheap knock-off font of Helvetica and doesn't have properly baseline alignment for its descenders. Basically if you compare Helvetica up close with Arial you will notice that Helvetica has a proper alignment and its ascender and descender parts in the characters are properly aligned for better visual digestion.



So just curious...

[Geir]

Hmm.. what can I say other then I am not a graphics artist, but a fine artist. So there is a lot of stuff I dont know about. But when you say it, I have heard this before sometime. And I wanted a non serif.

[shh]

Bit late but...
For most fonts the standards for legal text are, for dark on light, (and it has to be near black on near white) 5pt, anything else 6pt.
For body text I'd judge by eye, whatever size looks good go for it, for legal text though you generally want it as small as possible, but if it's too small it'll be void, so it's probably best to stick with the standards, and they'll definitely work with Arial.

[PetarB]

Hi there, we do an enormous amount of type work. In Australia the legal minimum limit is 6pt, using Helvetica as the x-height measurement. And from the brand guidelines I have seen for various international IPs, it would seem to be the same in the US. Sometimes when we have a lot to squeeze in we use a condensed version of Helvetica or whatever other typeface might be specified. Most of the larger publications accepting advertising artwork wont accept anything less than 10pt for reversed type. Don't go with whatever 'looks right' - print it out, make sure it's legible, then imagine you have poor eyesight. 6pt minimum. But that's not the best size, the best size is what's legible.

[Spyplane]

9 pt serif or sans serif will work for people with good and weak vision.

[Fanjoy]

Most of what's been said here is right. Stick to 8pt at absolute minimum, I tend to use 9pt however, 10 seems a little large to me for small print.