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Rob Weychert reaches for the top notes to sing us a song of typographic scale. A little attention to scale and to the mathematics will help you to hit a high note with your designs this Christmas and beyond.

I’ve been studying music theory this year. While some of its core concepts were already familiar to me, much of their specifics were not. Or so I thought. A funny thing happened when I was learning the major scales.

While playing through a song I had written some years before, I started picking it apart to see how it correlated with the theory I was learning. I had composed the melody without any thought to what the specific notes were, but as I started to transcribe them, a pattern quickly emerged: all the B’s and E’s were flat and the rest of the notes were natural. Lo and behold, long before my music theory studies began, I had written a song in B♭ major. My ears already knew how the major scales worked even if my brain didn’t. (If you know how “do re mi fa so la ti do” is supposed to sound tonally, then your ears know, too.)

When music is composed to a scale, it sounds “right” to us. And just as our ears appreciate harmony and melody with a rational basis, our eyes can appreciate the same concepts applied to spatial relationships.

Have you ever struggled with sizing type in a design project, especially when you need more than just one or two sizes? Have you ever despaired at the number of ad-hoc type sizes on your site spiraling out of control over time? It could be that you’ve been composing the typographic equivalent of a cacophonous symphony. And the first thing any composer will tell you to do is to get that thing on a scale.

Meet the typographic scale

You don’t need to know music theory to work with a typographic scale. You only need to know that a scale is a range of values with an established mathematic relationship. For a typographic scale, that relationship is frequently a steady interval between type sizes. Depending on what you need your type to do, the interval might be fixed (e.g. each size is two pixels bigger than the size before it) or it might be proportional (e.g. each size is twice as big as the size before it). I personally rarely find fixed intervals useful, so I’ll be focusing on proportional intervals.

The most important thing to understand about proportional intervals is thankfully not complicated: The bigger the intervals are, the more drastic the size differences will be in your scale. If your layout calls for contrast, a bigger interval might be the way to go. If you’re aiming for something more nuanced, go smaller. But keep these things in mind:

• There is such a thing as too much nuance: if a size on your scale is virtually indistinguishable from the sizes adjacent to it, it defeats the purpose of using a scale.
• On the flip side, too much contrast renders the sizes’ proportional relationship moot. At a certain point, massive display type is arguably more graphic than textual.
• More is less. The more sizes you use, the less they’ll mean.

Setting up the scale variables

The quickest way to get a scale up and running when working on the web is to drop its values into some CSS variables. The naming convention I typically use begins with --scale0, which is the body text size. The size below it is --scale-1 (as in “scale minus one”), the size above it is --scale1, and so on. Keeping the names relative to each other like this helps me move around the scale intuitively as I use it. If, say, --scale4 isn’t big enough for my h1, I can move up to --scale5 or --scale6, and I always know exactly how many steps away from the body text I am. Here’s a first pass at a simple set of scale variables using an interval of 1.5:

:root {
  --scale-2: 7.1px;  /* 10.7 ÷ 1.5 */
  --scale-1: 10.7px; /* 16 ÷ 1.5   */
  --scale0: 16px;    /* body text  */
  --scale1: 24px;    /* 16 × 1.5   */
  --scale2: 36px;    /* 24 × 1.5   */
}

I can use these variables with any CSS property that accepts a numeric value, like so:

p { font-size: var(--scale0); }

Rooting around in rems

I’m off to a good start. However, those px values are a little too absolute for my liking. If I convert them to rems, it’ll give my scale more flexibility. rem stands for “root em.” 1rem is equivalent to the html element’s text size, which in most browsers defaults to 16px. Crucially, though, users can adjust that size in their browser settings, and using rems in my CSS will respect those preferences.

:root {
  --scale-2: 0.4rem;  /* 0.7rem ÷ 1.5 */
  --scale-1: 0.7rem;  /* 1rem ÷ 1.5   */
  --scale0: 1rem;     /* body text    */
  --scale1: 1.5rem;   /* 1rem × 1.5   */
  --scale2: 2.25rem;  /* 1.5rem × 1.5 */
}

Another benefit of the relative nature of rems: I tend to use larger text sizes on large viewports and smaller text sizes on small viewports. Rather than adjusting dozens or hundreds of typographic CSS declarations per breakpoint, I can shift the whole scale up or down merely by adjusting the font-size on the html element:

html { font-size: 100%; }     /* 1rem = 16px */

@media screen and (min-width: 25em) {
  html { font-size: 112.5%; } /* 1rem = 18px */
}

Calculating with calc()

My scale is coming along. Its variables’ intuitive names make it easy for me to use, and its rem values respect the user’s browser preferences and allow me to easily shift the size of the entire scale at different viewport sizes. But my setup still isn’t optimized for one very important adjustment: the interval, which is currently 1.5. If 1.5 isn’t quite working for me and I want to see how an increase or decrease will affect the scale, I need to do the math all over again for every step in the scale every time I adjust the interval. The bigger the scale, the more time that will take. It’s time to put down the abacus and get calc() involved.

:root {
  --int: 1.5;
  --scale0: 1rem;
  --scale-1: calc(var(--scale0) / var(--int));
  --scale-2: calc(var(--scale-1) / var(--int));
  --scale1: calc(var(--scale0) * var(--int));
  --scale2: calc(var(--scale1) * var(--int));
}

My interval now has its very own variable, called --int. calc() determines each scale size by multiplying the preceding size by --int. Now that every size is ultimately dependent on --scale0’s value, --scale0 must appear first in the list. Since the sizes smaller than --scale0 are going down rather than up, their values require division rather than multiplication.

Scaling the scale

I can now quickly and easily tweak my scale’s interval by adjusting --int until the proportions are just right, but if I want to add more sizes to the scale, I need to add more variables and calc() values. This isn’t too big of a deal, but if I want to double or triple the number of sizes, it’s kind of a headache. Luckily, this is the sort of thing Sass is really good at. In the following code, adjusting the first four Sass variables at the top of :root will quickly spin up a set of CSS variables like the scale above, with any interval (proportional or fixed) and any number of scale sizes:

:root {
  $interval: 1.5;    // Unitless for proportional, unit for fixed
  $body-text: 1rem;  // Must have a unit
  $scale-min: -2;    // Unitless negative integer
  $scale-max: 2;     // Unitless positive integer

  --int: #{$interval};
  --scale0: #{$body-text};

  @if $scale-min < 0 {
  // Generate scale variables smaller than the base text size
    @for $i from -1 through $scale-min {
      @if type-of($interval) == number {
        @if unitless($interval) {
          --scale#{$i}: calc(var(--scale#{$i + 1}) / var(--int));
        } @else {
          --scale#{$i}: calc(var(--scale#{$i + 1}) - var(--int));
        }
      }
    }
  }
  @if $scale-max > 0 {
    // Generate scale variables larger than the base text size
    @for $i from 1 through $scale-max {
      @if type-of($interval) == number {
        @if unitless($interval) {
          --scale#{$i}: calc(var(--scale#{$i - 1}) * var(--int));
        } @else {
          --scale#{$i}: calc(var(--scale#{$i - 1}) + var(--int));
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Go forth and scale

Typographic scales have been an indispensable part of my work for many years, and CSS variables and calc() make setup, adjustments, and experimentation easier than ever. I hope you find these techniques as useful as I do!

About the author

Rob Weychert is a Brooklyn-based designer. He helps shape the reading experience at ProPublica and has previously helped make books at A Book Apart, games at Harmonix, and websites at Happy Cog. In his free time, he obsesses over music and film. Despite all this, he is probably best known as a competitive air guitarist.

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Panel Marcus Phillips (twitter github) Fred Zirdung (twitter github) Jamison Dance (twitter github blog) Joe Eames (twitter github blog) Charles Max Wood (twitter github Teach Me To Code Rails Ramp Up) Discussion 01:30 - Marcus Phillips and Fred Zirdung Introduction Hack Reactor 03:31 - Experience with Meteor 05:45 - Intro to Meteor Client-side Environment Tethered Queries minimongo 09:56 - Websockets 11:29 - Deployment Support 14:51 - The Cloud 16:43 - Meteor and Server-side JavaScript Engines Meteor Devshop 7 - LIVE 19:48 - Meteor and Windows 22:43 - Package Management System 23:49 - Building Meteor Apps 29:04 - Meteor Methods 33:02 - Open-Source Meteor Apps 34:15 - Hack Reactor Education Training Developers Removing Complexity Picks ng-conf (Joe) Ben Kamens: “Shipping Beats Perfection” Explained (Jamison) Evan Goer: Writing for Developers — Some Rational Techniques (Jamison) BOXEN (Chuck) Book Yourself Solid Illustrated: The Fastest, Easiest, and Most Reliable System for Getting More Clients Than You Can Handle Even if You Hate Marketing and Selling by Michael Port (Chuck) meteor / packages / deps / deps.js (Marcus) Underscoreboard (Marcus) actionHero.js (Fred) Satellite (Fred) Tilden (Fred) rethink-livedata (Marcus) Next Week Monacle with Alex MacCaw Transcript JAMISON:  Speaking of single and [working] 30 hours a week after your job, is Merrick there?   [Hosting and bandwidth provided by the Blue Box Group. Check them out at BlueBox.net.]  [This episode is sponsored by Component One, makers of Wijmo. If you need stunning UI elements or awesome graphs and charts, then go to Wijmo.com and check them out.]  [This podcast is sponsored by JetBrains, makers of WebStorm. Whether you’re working with Node.js or building the frontend of your web application, WebStorm is the tool for you. It has great code quality and code exploration tools and works with HTML5, Node, TypeScript, CoffeeScript, Harmony, LESS, Sass, Jade, JSLint, JSHint, and the Google Closure Compiler. Check it out at JetBrains.com/WebStorm.] CHUCK:  Hey everybody and welcome to episode 76 of the JavaScript Jabber show. This week on our panel, we have Jamison Dance. JAMISON:  Hello friends. CHUCK:  Joe Eames. JOE:  Hey there. CHUCK:  I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.TV. We’ve also got two special guests and that is Fred Zirdung. FRED:  Hello. CHUCK:  Did I totally butcher that? FRED:  Yeah, you got it right. CHUCK:  Okay. And Marcus Phillips. MARCUS:  Hi everybody. CHUCK:  Since you guys haven't been on the show before, do you want to introduce yourself? We’ll have Marcus go first. MARCUS:  Sure. I'm Marcus Phillips. I'm a JavaScript enthusiast. I've been in it for a long time. Really excited about framework architecture and lately, all about teaching what I've learned over the course of time that I've been working in the Bay Area and working on the frontend of Twitter and things like that. Nowadays, I teach at Hack Reactor full time which is an immersive school for learning to become a developer over a period of three months. JAMISON:  Cool. CHUCK:  And which technologies do you teach at Hack Reactor? MARCUS:  We use JavaScript as our teaching language. Fundamentally, what we’re trying to do is teach people software engineering principles. So, JavaScript just turns out to be one of the most useful languages we can use to do that. But from there, we kind of want to give people practical skills that they can use immediately on the job. So, we definitely drive the entire curriculum out of GitHub repos and teach them some practical things like Backbone and Node and deployment strategies. So yeah, we kind of cover the gambit from frontend to backend with a focus on JavaScript in particular. CHUCK:  Awesome. That sounds really cool. JOE:  Yeah, it does. MARCUS:  It’s a lot of fun. CHUCK:  Fred,

The panelists talk to Henrik Joreteg and Philip Roberts of &yet.

02:54 - John A. De Goes Introduction

• Twitter
• GitHub
• Blog
• SlamData

06:34 - Phil Freeman Introduction

• Twitter
• GitHub
• Blog

07:38 - What is PureScript?

09:11 - Features

• Extensible Effects

12:24 - Overcoming the Vocabulary Problem in Functional Programming

• Gang of Four Book (Design Patterns)
• purescript-halogen

20:07 - Prerequisites to PureScript

26:14 - PureScript vs Elm

• JavaScript Jabber Episode #175: Elm with Evan Czaplicki and Richard Feldman
• No Runtime
• General Purpose vs UI-Focused
• Generic Containers

40:37 - Similar Languages to PureScript

44:07 - PureScript Background

• Roy

47:48 - The WebAssembly Effect

51:01 - Readability

53:42 - PureScript Learning Resources

• PureScript by Example by Phil Freeman
• PureScript Conf 2015/6

55:43 - Working with Abstractions

• purescript-aff
• Audrey Popp: Fighting Node Callback Hell with PureScript

Picks

Philip Robects: What the heck is the event loop anyways? @ JS Conf EU 2014 (Aimee)
loupe (Aimee)
The Man in the High Castle (Jamison)
Nickolas Means: How to Crash an Airplane @ RubyConf 2015 (Jamison)  
Lambda Lounge Utah (Jamison)
Michael Trotter: Intro to PureScript @ Utah Haskell Meetup (Jamison)
Utah Elm Users (Jamison)
Screeps (Joe)
Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era by Tony Wagner (Joe)
Dark Matter (Joe)
LambdaConf (John)
@lambda_conf (John)
ramda (John)
Proper beef, ale & mushroom pie (John)
Tidal (Phil)
purescript-flare (Phil)
The Forward JS Conference (Phil)

Sponsors

• KendoUI

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for $100 credit

• Clubhouse

Panel

• AJ O’Neal

• Chris Ferdinandi

• Charles Max Wood

Joined by special guest: Phil Hawksworth and Divya Sasidharan

Episode Summary

This episode features special guests Philip Hawksworth and Divya Sasidharan. Phil lives just outside of London and Divya lives in Chicago, and both of them work for Netlify. Divya is also a regular on the Devchat show Views on Vue. The panelists begin by discussing what JAMstack is. JAM stands for JavaScript, API, and Markup. It used to be known as the new name for static sites, but it’s much more than that. Phil talks about how dynamic ‘static’ sites really are. JAMstack sites range from very simple to very complex, Static is actually a misnomer. JAMstack makes making, deploying, and publishing as simple as possible.

The panelists discuss the differences between building your own API and JAMstack and how JavaScript fits into the JAMstack ecosystem. They talk about keys and secrets in APIs and the best way to handle credentials in a static site. There are multiple ways to handle it, but Netlify has some built in solutions. All you have to do is write your logic for what you want your function to do and what packages you want included in it, they do all the rest. Every deployment you make stays there, so you can always roll back to a previous version.

Charles asks about how to convert a website that’s built on a CMS to a static site and some of the tools available on Netlify. They finish by discussing different hangups on migrating platforms for things like Devchat (which is built on WordPress) and the benefits of switching servers.

Links

• API

• React

• JAMstack

• CMS (content management system)

• CDM (Customer Data Management)

• Markup

• UI (User Interface)

• Jekyll

• Progressive Enhancement

• 11ty

• Hugo

• React Static

• Gatsby

• Vue

• AWS

• AWS Lambda

• Azure

• Markdown

• WordPress

• Zapier

• Stefan Baumgartner article

• RSS feed

Picks

AJ O’Neal:

• Prince Ali Ababwa (Aladdin)

• Node v.10.12

Chris Ferdinandi:

• Bouncer

• Philip Morgan Consulting

• Jonathan Stark Consulting

Charles Max Wood:

• Mastadon Social

• Thanksgiving turkey

Phil Hawksworth:

• Dripping (solidified meat drippings spread on toast)

• They Shall Not Grow Old

Divya Sasidharan:

• Fear, Trust, and JavaScript

• Women’s Pockets Are Inferior

• Debt: A Love Story

Sponsors

• Sentry use the code “devchat” for 2 months free on Sentry small plan
• CacheFly

Host: Charles Max Wood

Joined By Special Guest: Phil Hawksworth

Episode Summary

Currently the Head of Developer Relations at Netlify, Phil has been a developer for 20 years. Even though he was interested in computers from an early age, he started  studying Civil Engineering in university before changing course and switching to Computer Science. Though he didn't particularly enjoy studying Computer Science, he really liked working with HTML where he didn't have to compile any code and that's when he started thinking about a career in web development.

Phil talks about his favorite projects he has worked on using JAMstack and JavaScript. He works remotely out of London, UK and as head of developer relations he spends a lot of time traveling for conferences for work. He doesn't have a 'typical' work day, but when he is not traveling for work he enjoys catching up on conversations on Slack and Twitter about JAMstack and collaborating with the rest of is team in San Francisco.

Links

• JavaScript Jabber 347: JAMstack with Divya Sasidharan & Phil Hawksworth
• Eleventy
• JAMstack
• Phil’s Medium  
• Phil's Twitter
• Phil's GitHub
• Phil's LinkedIn
• Phil's Website
• https://www.thenewdynamic.org/
• Netlify
• https://www.facebook.com/javascriptjabber
• https://twitter.com/JSJabber
• https://www.facebook.com/DevChattv

Picks

Phil Hawksworth:

• Rich Harris - Rethinking reactivity

Charles Max Wood:

• EverywhereJS JavaScript Community

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Radio actor, writer, and producer from the 1930s-1950s. Scripts, financial records, correspondence, and visual materials primarily pertain to radio and television programming. Chiefly documented is the show Gang Busters from its conception to its iterations on television and film.

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