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How can I make text that is larger than the size of the output of {\Huge ...}?

I would like to be able to make text arbitrarily large (even if that is done by some suboptimal scaling routine).

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8 Answers 8

up vote 53 down vote accepted

You can use the Memoir document class. It provides two things that are relevant to your question:

More Base Font Sizes

The standard LaTeX document classes only allow you to choose 10pt, 11pt or 12point as the "base" font size for your document. Memoir provides many more choices: 9pt, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt, 14pt, 17pt, 20pt, 25pt, 30pt, 36pt, 48pt and 60pt. Since all font size declarations are affected by the base font size, using a bigger base font size will make \Huge render in a bigger font.

The \HUGE Font Size

For when it absolutely has to be bigger than \Huge, crank it to 11 with \HUGE.

alt text

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+1 for the embedded xkcd! –  Chris Phan Jul 27 '10 at 12:18
The answer was great, and the xkcd made it even better! –  Vivi Jul 29 '10 at 12:03
link is broken. –  titus Mar 3 '12 at 17:18
@titus Fixed, thanks. –  Sharpie Mar 7 '12 at 18:27
Using memoir is a total hack. But it makes sense that someone writing his memoirs would need a larger font ... –  g33kz0r Apr 17 '13 at 18:11

A quick search on CTAN turned up anyfontsize. To quote the description:

The package allows the to user select any font size (via e.g. \fontsize{...}{...}\selectfont ), even those sizes that are not listed in the .fd file. If such a size is requested, LaTeX will search for and select the nearest listed size; anyfontsize will then scale the font to the size actually requested.

Similar functionality is available for the CM family (type1cm), for the EC family (type1ec), or for either computer modern encoding (fix-cm); the present package generalises the facility.

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If you use Type 1 fonts (e.g., package mathptmx or mathpazo), you can simply use the \fontsize command with large point sizes:

{\fontsize{50}{60}\selectfont Foo!}

(The first parameter (50) is font size. The second parameter (60) is line spacing. An appropriate line spacing depends on the font. Something like 1.2 times font size is commonly used with CM fonts. But it does not really matter if you are typesetting just one line of text.)

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Could you add an explanation what the meaning of the first and 2nd argument is (50 and 60)? Width times height in points? –  maxschlepzig Oct 18 '11 at 9:47
@JukkaSuomela: Is 50 the biggest font size? I'm trying to get the header as big as possible (source). Terve! –  Emanuel Berg Oct 3 '12 at 23:29
How / Where to check if the fonts I'm using are indeed Type 1 (or not) ? –  nutty about natty Jul 9 '13 at 15:44
You can use this with any type of font, not just type1, you may need to modify the fd files (eg fix-cm package in the case of cm fonts) –  David Carlisle Dec 17 '13 at 19:15

The \resizebox command (from graphicx package) is convenient if you want to produce, e.g., a title that fills the entire page width:

\resizebox{\linewidth}{!}{\itshape Foo!}
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That's a neat solution... –  Seamus Aug 12 '11 at 9:58
Keep in mind, that linebreaks require a workaround –  Jakob Jul 29 '13 at 14:56

In XeTeX (using fontspec) you can use system fonts many of which have a "Scale" attribute you can set to a large number. For instance, in one document I have this line for a largeish Japanese font:

\newfontinstance\bigkanafont[Color=000000,Scale=2.5]{Hiragino Mincho Pro W3}
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In your class add:

%% Define a HUGE 
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According to http://www.mostlymaths.net/2009/03/big-fonts-in-latex.html, you can use the fix-cm package to get arbitrary-size fonts. In fact, searching CTAN for fix-cm seems to give a few different packages that provide this functionality. I've never used any of them myself so I couldn't tell you which ones might work or not, but it shouldn't be hard to try them.

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Yeah, searching CTAN for fix-cm gives three results: type1cm, which recommends fix-cm, fix-cm itself, and the more general anyfontsize that's in Andrew Stacey's answer. –  ShreevatsaR Jul 31 '10 at 1:56

There is also a package called moresize that can be useful.

And another trick is to use, 10pt, 11pt, or 12pt but with a proportional, smaller "geometry" than the one desired.

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Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference. –  canaaerus Feb 25 at 9:30

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