So you've finished that perfect layout and all that text now sits nicely on the page on screen. You generate your PDF that you will be sending to the printer and dutifully review it in Acrobat to make sure all your t's are crossed and all those photos are right. Happy and content with your work you push your file towards the printer. Your printer emails back a confirming PDF, that as before you check diligently for any font problems or missing elements. Perfect; you see no problems as you give the printer the approval to print. Later when the box arrives from the printer you tear into it eager to see the masterpiece you've created.... you're shoulders slump as you see how small the text is and how that big logo you placed looks so tiny.
You've just experienced the "Magnifying Screen" effect. Many people have fallen into this trap over the years and the trap is only getting bigger with the advent of larger and larger displays. Because of how hard small text is to read on a computer screen most of us use larger displays and work on our documents with some level of zoom applied. This makes the documents, layouts, etc easier to see and manipulate [and there is certainly nothing wrong with that]. The hidden danger is that the zoom skews our perception of size, particularly when working on smaller artwork like business cards, stickers, or small product packaging. Because people frequently view these small layouts in a "fit-to-screen" type zoom there is an illusion that you have more space in your layout than you really do. Because of this things like margins tend to be very tiny on the final printed piece simply because they look so large on screen. For example, if you have a 1/8" margin (a typical 'narrow' margin for a business card) but are viewing the page at 500% zoom; that margin will appear on screen to be over 1/2" wide which you might have the urge to narrow as it appears 'to wide' on screen.
Fonts have a similar problem when working zoomed in. Taking the example above of a business card being viewed at 500% zoom consider the size of fonts that might be applied. 12 point type appears huge at this zoom level taking up about a 1/2" of vertical space as it's displayed on screen. Even 8 point type appears fairly large. It's not uncommon to see people use 6 point or smaller fonts on these smaller layouts simply due to their on screen perception that 8 point or 10 point text is too big. Keep in mind here folks, a standard font size used in books for comfortable reading is in the 10 to 14 point range. 6 point type is frequently used for 'legalese' text like in a warranty or disclaimer and 4 point type is small enough many people need a magnifying glass to read it. The point here (no pun intended) is that while all that text looks great on your business card on screen.. in final print it may not be what your expecting.
What can you do about it?
There are some very simple steps you can take to help avoid this problem;
Zoom out once and a while (be aware "actual size" on your zoom menu isn't always actual size). Doing this will let you get a look at the layout from a closer to real size and will help keep your perception of available space in check.
Print your document. If you print your document at actual size (100%) you can get a really good idea about the available space, how big your text is, or if that logo you spent so much time on is going to appear large enough.
Don't use font sizes less than 7 point unless you have a real reason to do so [like for legalese mentioned above]. It's also good to remember that here in the U.S. a large segment of our population is getting up there in age (i.e. the 'baby boomers') and for many with age comes poor eyesight. Keeping fonts closer to that 10-14 point range will make things much easier on those old eyes.


