How to Make a Meme That Reads at a Glance
Two words get 130 px letters on a 1000 px picture; twenty-four words get 54 px. Keep it short, outline it, and pick the layout for the joke.
Short Text Gets Big Letters
A meme is read in a second, usually as a small picture in a feed, so the length of the text decides how big it can be. We put captions of different lengths on a 1000 × 750 picture in our Meme Generator, which fits text to a third of the picture’s height, and recorded the size it chose and how big that is when the meme is shown 400 pixels wide on a phone:
| Words | Lines | Letter size on the picture | Size in a 400 px feed |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | 1 | 130 px | 52.0 px |
| 4 | 1 | 109 px | 43.6 px |
| 6 | 2 | 109 px | 43.6 px |
| 8 | 2 | 109 px | 43.6 px |
| 12 | 2 | 78 px | 31.2 px |
| 16 | 3 | 72 px | 28.8 px |
| 24 | 4 | 54 px | 21.6 px |
Up to about eight words the text stays large; past twelve it shrinks quickly, and at twenty-four words it is under a third of its size at two words. Split a long joke between the top and bottom text, or move the setup into a caption bar, rather than cramming one line.
Why White Text With a Black Outline
The classic style is not just tradition. White letters with a dark outline read on bright skies and dark rooms alike, because every letter carries its own contrasting edge. Keep the outline in proportion to the letters: our tool draws it at 14% of the letter size, so it stays visible when text shrinks without swallowing the letter shapes when it is large. The traditional typeface is Impact, but it is not installed on Android phones, so a meme made in a browser there can come out in a different font. We self-host Anton, an open-source condensed bold face in the same spirit, so the result looks the same everywhere.
Pick the Layout for the Joke
Top-and-bottom text suits a setup and a punchline. A caption bar above the picture suits a longer setup, with the picture as the punchline, and keeps the picture uncovered. Two panels side by side or stacked suit comparisons and before-and-after; four panels suit a sequence. In every layout our tool fits each panel’s text separately; in our test of 304 text blocks across all layouts, none ran outside its panel.
Pictures You Can Use
Most famous meme pictures are photographs or film stills that someone owns, which is why our tool does not host them. Your own photos are always safe to use, and they often make the funniest memes for a group chat or a team channel. If you use a picture of a real person, think about how they would feel seeing it shared.
PNG or JPG?
For a photo with text on it the two are close: our test meme was 103,307 bytes as PNG and 84,306 as JPG. PNG keeps the text edges perfectly sharp; JPG is smaller and fine for photos. Copying the image and pasting it straight into a chat skips the file entirely.
Make a meme
Your picture, outlined text or a caption bar, 2 and 4 panels, no watermark.
Frequently Asked Questions
What font are memes written in?
How long should meme text be?
Can I make a meme without a watermark?
Can I use famous meme pictures?
Should I save my meme as PNG or JPG?
Published Oct 14, 2026 by Derek Giordano