Text in a photo book is nearly always the smallest thing on the page — a caption, a date, a name under a portrait. It is also the part that has to still work in thirty years, when the person who can explain the photograph is not there.
The floor
Below about 7 point, printed text stops being comfortably readable for most people, and below 6 it stops being readable at all for many.
In a book we design, the aim is to keep every caption above that floor. It is worth knowing because it is the constraint behind two things people ask for:
Long captions get smaller or they get cut. A caption is set in a fixed space. Forty words in the space for twelve either shrinks below the floor or overflows.
More text on a page means less room for photographs. Genuinely a trade, and worth making deliberately.
What makes small text harder to read
| Harder | Easier |
|---|---|
| Light grey text | Solid dark text |
| Text over a photograph | Text on paper |
| A very light or thin weight | A normal weight |
| Reversed out — white on dark | Dark on light |
| A decorative face | A plain one |
| Glossy paper under a light | Non-glare paper |
⚠️ White text on a dark photograph is the combination that fails first, and it is the one people ask for most. It looks striking on a screen and at small sizes on paper it fills in and loses definition. Non-glare paper →
For anything that has to last
Names in full, and years. Not “Mummy at the old house” — the actual name and the actual year.
Set larger than you think. If a caption is carrying the record — who, when, where — it deserves the size that makes it readable to somebody who has never seen these people. Albums as heirlooms →
Dark on light, plain, and not over the photograph.
Dates and numbers break first
Inside a caption, the characters most likely to be misread in print are the digits. At small sizes, 3 and 8 close up, 1 and 7 lose their difference, and 6, 9 and 0 start to look alike.
Write dates in words where you can. “14 March 1998” survives a small size, a tired reader and thirty years; “14/03/98” does not. It also removes the question of which number is the month, which a reader brought up on the other convention will get wrong.
Spell out anything that is a number only to you. “Flat 302” means nothing to a grandchild; “our first flat, in Lajpat Nagar” does. A PIN code, a car number plate or a train number is worth including only if you would also explain it.
Hindi and other Indian scripts
Captions in Hindi, or in another Indian script such as Tamil, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi or Marathi, are welcome — say so when you order — and they need a little more room than English at the same nominal size. Most Indian scripts carry vowel signs above and below the main letters, and conjuncts stack several letters into one shape, so at a size where an English caption is comfortable, the same line in Devanagari can look cramped and its small marks can fill in.
What that means in practice:
- Keep script captions shorter than you would in English, so they can be set a size up.
- Check the marks on the proof, letter by letter — a matra or a dot in the wrong place changes a word, and nobody who does not read the script will notice.
- Mixing scripts on one page is fine, as long as each caption stays in one of them. Can you print in Hindi or a regional language? →
Screenshots are a different problem
Text inside an image is not typeset text — it is pixels, and it cannot be enlarged. That is why a screenshot of a message thread has a much lower ceiling than a caption does. Printing screenshots and chat threads →
What we do
Send us the words and we set them. Caption writing and typesetting are part of a designed product, so you are not choosing sizes or making layout decisions.
What is worth telling us is which captions carry information that has to survive — names, dates, places — as against which are a line of commentary. The first kind gets set to be read; the second can be smaller.
And the proof shows you. Every caption on every page, before it prints. The design proof →
If you are setting the type yourself
A magazine you designed and send us to print is different: nothing is typeset for you and there is no proof. We check the file’s page count, size and image quality, you confirm on WhatsApp, and it prints exactly as sent — so every size, spelling and line break is yours.
Before you export:
- Print one page at home at 100%, on A4, and read the smallest caption at arm’s length. Your screen zooms; paper does not.
- Keep all text at least 5 mm inside the trim, and embed the fonts in the PDF.
- Avoid hairline and script fonts below headline size. They look elegant in a design app at 200% and break up on the page.
- Take white text off busy photographs, or put it on a solid panel.
Design tools make it easy to set text that looks right on a laptop. On an A4 page held in the hand, the same caption is usually a size too small.
Frequently asked
What is the smallest text size for printing? About 7 point for comfortable reading. Below 6 point it is unreadable for many people.
How long can a caption be? Short. A caption sits in a fixed space, and a long one either shrinks below the readable floor or crowds the page.
Can I have white text on a dark photograph? It is the combination that fails first at small sizes. Dark text on paper is far more legible.
Do I choose the text size? No. Send the words and they are typeset as part of the design, and you see every caption on the proof.
What should captions say for a book that will be inherited? Full names and years. Not nicknames — the reader in thirty years has never met these people.
Part of our guide to paper and printing. See also: short captions and long ones, do you write the captions for me? and albums as heirlooms. Setting the type yourself for a magazine you will send us to print? The same floor applies: get your magazine printed.
Captions included: Photo magazines from ₹499 · Hardcover albums from ₹1,299