A meme is a picture plus a line of text that changes what the picture means. The words carry the joke, but the formatting decides whether they can be read on a phone at a glance. This guide covers the two meme layouts people use today, why the classic look is white Impact with a black outline, how much text fits before it gets too small, and a worked example you can follow in the Meme Generator.
Two layouts: top and bottom text, or a caption above
The classic layout puts a short setup line across the top of the image and the punchline across the bottom, both written straight onto the picture. It works best when the picture has calm areas at the top and bottom - sky, a wall, a blurred background - for the text to sit on.
The newer layout puts the caption in a white bar above the picture, in plain black text. The text never covers the picture, and longer captions fit comfortably because the bar grows taller. If your joke is more than a short phrase, or the picture is busy right to its edges, the caption-above style is usually the better choice.
Making a meme, step by step
- Open the Meme Generator and drop in a PNG, JPG or WebP picture - a photo, a screenshot or a frame you saved from a video. It is read on your own device; nothing is uploaded.
- Pick a style: Top & bottom text for the classic look, or Caption above for a white caption bar.
- Type your text. For the classic style there are separate boxes for the top and bottom lines - leave either one empty if you only want one. Press Enter to force a line break exactly where you want it.
- Adjust the Max text size slider. This is the largest the text is allowed to be, as a share of the image width; long captions shrink below it automatically.
- For the classic style, choose the text and outline colours, the outline thickness, and whether to write in ALL CAPS.
- Choose PNG or JPG and download. The file keeps your picture's original resolution.
Why memes use white Impact with a black outline
The classic meme font is Impact: a heavy, condensed sans-serif that came free with Windows and the Mac, which is exactly why early meme makers reached for it. Its condensed letters fit more words across an image and stay legible as a thumbnail.
The black outline is what really does the work. White text on its own disappears over a bright sky; black text vanishes over a dark jacket. White letters with a black edge are readable over any background, because whichever colour the picture happens to be behind a letter, one of the two contrasts with it. That is why the outline matters more than the colour you pick - if you change the text to yellow, keep the dark edge.
One catch: Impact is installed on Windows and macOS but not on Android, Linux or ChromeOS. On those devices the tool falls back to the nearest heavy font and tells you so. The result is still readable, but if you want the exact classic look, make the meme on a PC or a Mac.
How much text fits?
Less than you think, and that is a feature. A meme is read in about a second, so the best captions are a handful of words per line. In the classic style, the text is wrapped to the width of the picture minus a margin of 4% on each side, and each caption is given at most a third of the image height, so the top and bottom text can never meet in the middle and cover the subject.
When a caption needs more room than that, the text shrinks in small steps until the whole caption fits its share of the picture. There is a floor: below about 2.5% of the image width the letters stop being readable on a phone, so instead of shrinking further the tool shows a note telling you the caption is too long. At that point the fix is editing, not a smaller font - cut words, or switch to the caption-above style.
Worked example: a 1200 × 900 photo
Say you drop in a 1200 × 900 pixel photo with the classic style and the default maximum text size of 11% of the width.
- The largest the text may be is 11% of 1,200 = 132 px.
- The margin is 4% of the width, 48 px, so each line can be up to 1,200 - 2 × 48 = 1,104 px wide.
- Each caption may take a third of the height, minus the margin: 900 / 3 - 48 = 252 px.
- Lines are spaced at 1.12 times the font size, so a 132 px line takes about 148 px. One line fits easily.
- If your top caption needs two lines, they would take 2 × 148 = 296 px - more than 252. So the text steps down by 4% at a time: 126.7, 121.6, 116.8, then 112.1 px, where two lines take 2 × 112.1 × 1.12 = 251 px and fit.
- With the default outline of 16% of the font size, the outline is drawn about 18 px wide at 112 px, half of it outside the letters - a clear 9 px dark edge.
Because every one of those lengths is a share of the image rather than a fixed number of pixels, the same caption looks identical on a 600 px screenshot and a 4,000 px camera photo. The preview you see on screen is drawn by the same code at a smaller scale, so what you see is what you download.
Tips for a meme that reads well
- Crop first. A meme lands harder when the picture is tight on the subject; trim it with Crop Image and then add the text.
- Write in capitals for the classic style - Impact was designed for headlines, and lowercase Impact looks oddly cramped. The caption-above style keeps your own capitalisation, since sentence case reads naturally there.
- Use Enter to choose your own line breaks, so the joke's timing falls at the end of a line rather than wherever the wrap happens to land.
- Pick JPG for photos and PNG for screenshots or images with flat colours and sharp text. If a site has an upload limit, shrink the result with Compress Image to Size.
Privacy: what goes along with your meme
Many online meme makers upload your picture to render the text. Here the picture is drawn onto a canvas inside your browser, the text is painted on top, and the finished file is handed straight back to you. The download also carries no EXIF metadata, because a canvas export only contains pixels - so a meme made from a photo of your living room does not carry the GPS coordinates of your home into the group chat. If you want to check what an original photo was carrying, the EXIF Viewer shows it.
Frequently asked questions
- What font is used for memes?
- Impact, in white capitals with a thick black outline. It is a heavy, condensed font that shipped free with Windows and macOS, which is how it became the meme standard. The outline matters as much as the font: it keeps the text readable over both bright and dark parts of the picture.
- How do I make a meme with text above the picture?
- Choose the Caption above style in the meme generator. Your caption is set in plain black text on a white bar that sits on top of the image, and the bar grows to fit longer captions, so the picture itself is never covered. This is the format most memes on social feeds use today.
- Why is my meme text so small?
- Because the caption is long. Text is wrapped to the width of the picture and each caption gets at most a third of the image height, so a long caption has to shrink to fit. Cut it to a few words per line, raise the Max text size slider if there is room, or switch to the caption-above style, whose bar grows with the text.