Introduction: Why Your Canva Design Feels "Off" (Even When the Font Is Right)
You picked a great font. Inter is one of the most legible, screen-optimized typefaces available, designed with a tall x-height and open letterforms that stay clear at small sizes. But choosing Inter was only half the job.
The real problem is hierarchy—the visual order that tells your reader what to look at first, second, and third. Canva's default text styles are a starting point, not a system. When every style is set to Regular weight and the size jumps are inconsistent, the design feels flat. Your eye has no clear path.
This guide gives you a repeatable system for Inter inside Canva: a recommended size scale, weight pairings, line-height values, and practical adjustments for common design formats.
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The Core Principle: Use a Modular Scale, Not Arbitrary Numbers
Professional typography rarely uses random sizes like 14, 17, 22, and 38. Instead, it uses a modular scale—a base size multiplied by a fixed ratio.
For Inter, a 16px body text base is the standard for screen readability. From there, two ratios work exceptionally well in Canva:
· 1.25 (Major Third): Subtle, compact, and balanced. Best for multi-page documents, dashboards, and dense layouts where dramatic size jumps would waste space.
· 1.333 (Perfect Fourth): Stronger contrast and more editorial. Best for social media graphics, presentations, and one-page designs that need to grab attention quickly.
Do not mix ratios. Pick one and apply it to every text style so the rhythm feels intentional.
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Recommended Font Size Settings for Inter in Canva
Here is a practical starting system based on a 16px body size and a 1.333 ratio, with weight adjustments that solve the "all Regular" problem.
Canva Style Recommended Size Recommended Weight Role
Title 42 Bold (700) Hero message / cover title
Subtitle 36 SemiBold (600) Supporting cover text
Heading 32 SemiBold (600) Section opener
Subheading 24 Medium (500) Sub-section label
Section Header 20 SemiBold (600) In-content label
Body 16 Regular (400) Sustained reading text
Quote 16 Italic or Medium Pull quote / callout
Caption 14 Regular (400) Metadata, credits, fine print
This table does two things the defaults do not: it creates clear size contrast between levels, and it uses weight contrast so headings do not rely on size alone to stand out.
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The Adjustments Most People Miss: Weight, Line Height, and Tracking
1. Weight Contrast Beats Size Contrast Alone
A common mistake is making every heading bold and every body style regular. That creates a two-note system. Inter supports a full variable weight range, so use it.
· Title and Heading: Bold or SemiBold (700 or 600). These are the loudest voices.
· Subtitle and Subheading: SemiBold or Medium (600 or 500). They support without competing.
· Body and Caption: Regular (400). These should recede.
· Quote: Italic or Medium. A subtle shift signals "this is different" without breaking the system.
Canva's own guidance is straightforward: to create variety, change the weight, style, or size of your fonts rather than adding more typefaces.
2. Line Height: Body Needs Air, Headings Need Tightness
Inter's tall x-height makes it readable, but tight line height can still suffocate body text. Use these values:
· Body: 1.5 to 1.6 line height. This is the sustained-reading sweet spot.
· Headings: 1.1 to 1.3. Large text needs less leading; too much space makes a two-line heading feel disconnected.
· Captions: 1.3 to 1.5. Short lines benefit from slightly relaxed spacing for scanning.
3. Tracking: Leave It Alone for Body, Tighten Headings Slightly
Inter is designed with generous spacing and balanced proportions. For body text, do not touch tracking—the font is already optimized. For large titles and headings, reducing tracking by a small amount (Canva's "–10" to "–20" range) can make the words feel more cohesive at display sizes. This is optional and depends on the specific design, but it is a useful refinement.
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Format-Specific Adjustments (Because a Presentation Is Not a Document)
The table above is a baseline. The design format changes what "readable" means.
Social Media Graphics
Body text at 16px is fine for a document, but on a phone screen inside a feed, it competes with the platform UI. For social graphics:
· Body text: 18–22pt as a starting point.
· Headlines: 48–56pt to stop the scroll.
· Keep line height slightly tighter than document body text so the copy fits without feeling cramped.
Presentations
Presentation body text needs to be readable from across a room:
· Body text: 24–30pt.
· Headings: 35–50pt, bold.
· Use the 1.333 ratio on top of a larger base, not the 16px document base.
Documents and Ebooks
The 16px body base is correct here. Keep captions at 14 and ensure line height stays at 1.5 or higher for long-form reading. Chapter titles can sit at 32–42 depending on the page size.
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A Quick Sanity Check Before You Export
Run this five-point checklist every time you finish a Canva design:
1. Squint test: Squint at the design. Can you still tell which text is the title and which is the body? If everything blurs into one mass, the hierarchy is too weak.
2. Two-family rule: You are using one type family (Inter) with controlled weights. That is enough. Do not add a second display font unless you have a clear reason.
3. Body size floor: No body text below 16px in documents. No caption below 14px unless it is purely decorative metadata.
4. Line-length check: Body text lines should sit around 50–75 characters for comfortable reading. If lines run wider than that, increase the margins or reduce the text box width.
5. Contrast check: Weight and size create hierarchy, but color contrast still matters. Ensure body text meets accessibility contrast ratios against its background.
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Conclusion: A System, Not a Guess
The reason different AI tools give different answers is that there is no single "correct" pixel value. What matters is consistency and contrast. Start with a 16px body, pick a ratio (1.25 for dense documents, 1.333 for editorial and social), assign weights that separate the levels, and adjust the base size for the format.
Inter gives you a strong foundation. The settings above turn that foundation into a hierarchy that reads clearly and looks intentional—whether you are designing a presentation, a social post, or a multi-page document.
