Everything You Need to Know About Fonts for Display Boards

The most important objective for your board is to effectively communicate the facts about your project. It can only achieve that objective if it's easy to read. Over the years, expert newspaper editors as well as advertisers (Ogilvy 1983, 90) have formulated many rules of thumb for readability that we have translated for use on science project display boards.

• Use a font size of at least 16 points for your main body text. Anything smaller is too hard to read. (See tables below for more information on text size.)
• Stick with traditional fonts like Arial, Times New Roman, or similar typefaces.
• Use italics or bold for emphasis, not for all your text.
• Don't place your text on top of a picture; that makes it difficult to read.
• Don't use ALL CAPS; THEY ARE MUCH HARDER TO READ.

• Don't use reverse type (white text on a dark background).

  It is hard to read. Use black characters on a white (or pastel) background.
• They are much harder to read.
• Don't use more than two or three different fonts on your board. Times New Roman for body copy and Arial for headings makes for a nice combination.

Text Size

Suggestions for a Typical Science Project Display Board

Item	Font Size (points)	Comments
Title	150+	You want your title to be visible from across a room!
Headings	32+	Should be easily readable from five feet away by someone just walking by.
Subheadings	20+	This text is smaller than headings, but more noticeable than main text size.
Main Body Text	16 – 18	This is a comfortable text size for someone who comes closer to read more.
Captions	12 – 16	It's OK to make these a bit smaller than the body text if necessary.

Suggestions for Posters Where Close Approach Is Not Possible

Item	Font Size (points)	Comments
Title	150+	You want your title to be visible from across a room!
Headings	48	Should be easily readable for anyone walking nearby.
Subheadings	36	This text should be readable from at least five feet away.
Main Body Text	32	This is a comfortable text size for someone reading from a distance of 5 feet (7.5 m).
Captions	24 – 32	It's OK to make these a bit smaller than the body text if necessary.

The above font size suggestions have their root in the optimum size of text for a book. To have similar legibility at different distances, we want the angle between the top and bottom of a character as measured from the eye to be the same. Using similar triangles (with vertices at the top of the character, the bottom of the character, and the eye), you can show that if you double the reading distance; you must double the height of the character to have the same angle at the eye. See below:

Reading Distance and Font Size

Reading Distance		Minimum Comfortable Font Size	Comments
1.2 feet	0.35 m	8 points	This is the typical reading distance for a book. Most people prefer text to be 10, 11, or 12 points at this distance.
2.4 feet	0.7 m	16 points	This is the closest comfortable distance for reading a large poster.
5.0 feet	1.5 m	32 points	In many settings this is as close as one can get to a poster. Sometimes this is because the poster is roped off or in other cases large crowds simply make close approach difficult.
25.0 feet	7.5 m	160 points	For almost any setting, you want a title that can be read from at least this far away.

Ogilvy, David. Ogilvy on Advertising, New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1983.