Thanks. That link has the kind of info I'm looking for. And I'm definitely waiting to hear from @finebyfine
This question is one I wrestle with a lot in enclosure designs, and as I've been thinking of a response I'm realizing that this is one of the bigger design challenges that makes this hobby so fun for me.
The higher level issue here is that pedal enclosures are a type of user interface that many graphic designers and UI designers do not work with often unless they work in product design: a purely physical one.
Digital interfaces use a variety of visual language shortcuts for elements that are easy to take for granted and don't necessarily translate across media. Consider that underlined text on a webpage will probably mean a hyperlink and on a printed page will be a stress emphasis of the written text. While these are both emphasized from the text surrounding it, they are for different reasons and functions that shape a user's expectation in encountering them. If we wanted to replicate the printed stress emphasis on a webpage, an underline is typically the last thing we reach for for exactly this reason. What gets tricky here is that both printed and web content achieve balance in different ways (
through types of visual language) than physical things do, or can do. On a pedal with control labels that are, lets assume, hierarchically on the same level (eg, we can separate jack labels design-wise from knob labels), introducing text size variations can feel like we're messing with that even footing and making the "feedback" control seem less important than the "tone" control. Because, we are, if that's the only defining characteristic of that hierarchical level.
But even without making other design choices, text size isn't the only thing that defines this common footing. They're also defined by placement of simply being near a knob. No other text usually surrounds a knob than the label of what it does, so they're instantly tied together. Same sized knobs can, and usually always do, make text of different character lengths appear to take up the same amount space - because it's not
just the text that defines the "control" space in the first place.
There's a lot of ways to try to maintain consistency in control spaces. Some work better than others, and these can be self defeating easily as we realize consistency is defined by many plates spinning at once. Take for instance the idea of using a super narrow font to define the upper boundary in width. At a certain point size this is probably visual interesting, and a reasonable decision based on other factors. I've done it in pedals I think. But at smaller point sizes narrow text - especially lowercase - is really fucking difficult to read compared to regular width set at the same size. There's a reason narrow type was made for newspaper headlines: they're so large! When the text becomes harder to read easily, we're breaking a consistency that we probably don't think about often: effortless, or uniform effort, readability. Things that are harder to read are usually supposed to be less important because we don't need to be reading them all the time (or someone may not want us to, see: fine print).
My usual answer for this is pretty boring because it's a safe choice: just making the text sizes smaller. Most people, even with impaired vision, can read point sizes a lot smaller than we'd assume, and do it on a daily basis. I just printed out uppercase and lowercase text set from 3-8pt in Helvetica Now Micro, which granted is made for smaller point sizes, to check how low I personally can go - and I can comfortably read 5pt lowercase text from 3 feet away from without straining, and my vision is the worst now that it's been in my life. At 6 inches away I only had to strain to read lowercase 3pt. Uppercase I could read 3-8pt without straining even slightly from both distances. If I wasn't trying to wrap this up I'd have gone ahead and printed off 1 and 2 pt just for the fun of it. YMMV obviously, and just because I can read those sizes comfortably doesn't mean I'm saying go ahead and use 4pt text. But it's an easy enough way to let you keep text sizes the same for each label without impacting readability a ton, although I really don't see anything wrong with varying labels a point size or two to keep the widths closer. I usually give labels a character spacing of 10-75 at smaller sizes for breathing room and that strikes me as cohesive.
