What Are the Correct Font Settings for EAN-13 or UPC-A?

EAN-13 / UPC-A can be printed in several sizes. The possible sizes can be found in the specification. The nominal module width is 0.330 mm (optimized for 300 dpi printers it would be 0.339 mm). The human readable font must be adapted to these sizes.

The specification says that a "clearly legible font shall be used" for the human-readable digits, and OCR-B (as defined in ISO 1073-2) with a height of 2.75 mm at nominal size is recommended. Because this font is referenced only as a convenient standard typeface, you can use Courier, Consolas or Arial (Bold) if you don't have the OCR-B font available.

It is not part of the specification but you can use this kind of formula to determine a suitable font size (based on the module width parameter).

FontSize [pt] = ModuleWidth [mm] / 0.339 * 10

• EAN13 with a module width X=0.339mm ⇨ font size 10 pt (optional: bold)
• If the module width X = 0.5 mm ⇨ font size 14,7 pt

The formula above can be used for other barcodes, too.