An industrial automation workstation and display method for scaling and displaying text destined for a target industrial automation device are provided. The industrial automation workstation in one example embodiment includes a communication interface configured to transfer a display data including at least one text string to the industrial automation device and a processing system configured to obtain a target device dots-per-inch (DPI) for a display device of the industrial automation device, render the at least one text string at the device DPI, generate a scaling factor comprising a ratio of a workstation DPI divided by the target device DPI, scale the at least one text string using the scaling factor and generate a scaled text string, and display the scaled text string on a display device of the industrial automation workstation.