Components: increase the helpText.fontSize

[afercia]

Description

Splitting this out from #69451 (comment)

In #69451 the Visibility panel in the pre-publish checks has been refactored and now uses RadioControl which uses a 12 pixels font size for the help text.

gutenberg/packages/components/src/utils/font-values.js

Line 6 in 997934d

'helpText.fontSize': '12px',

The previous font size was 13 pixels. As such, the help text is now smaller and it's actually a reduced legibility level.

Overall, I'd think there should't be any text in the editor that uses a font size smaller than 13 pixels.
12 pixels is really too small in 2025. I'd even consider to raise any minimum font size to at least 14 pixels but for now 13px would be a good start.

Of course, I do understand the help text must have, in a way, slightly less prominence. However, typography hierarchy doesn't necessarily need to use the font size. It can be provided by color, spacing, white space and the like.

CC @WordPress/gutenberg-components and @WordPress/gutenberg-design

Step-by-step reproduction instructions

N/A

Screenshot to illustrate an example of help text with a 12 pixels font size (on the right) compared with the previous 13 pixels font size (on the left). Please ignore the different alignments / spacings and only focus on the help text font size.

Screenshots, screen recording, code snippet

No response

Environment info

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Please confirm that you have searched existing issues in the repo.

• Yes

Please confirm that you have tested with all plugins deactivated except Gutenberg.

• Yes

Please confirm which theme type you used for testing.

• Block
• Classic
• Hybrid (e.g. classic with theme.json)
• Not sure

[Mamaduka]

Thanks for creating an issue, @afercia!

[ciampo]

Nothing to say against larger font size in general, although we should be aware of the implications of changing the variable:

• there may be design implications (especially about type hierarchy and spacing) that may be considered a design regressions, and would therefore require other design adjustments to allow for the font size change
• let's make sure to update, in case, any corresponding sass variables across the repo (likely in the base scss styles files)
• let's make sure to check the consequences everywhere the variable is used

[afercia]

I'd agree on all points and this is definitely an effort I'd love to see establishing new typography system guidelines across all WordPress.
Cc @WordPress/gutenberg-design