Frameworks make decisions for you about how to organize, structure and design a site. Pattern libraries don’t separate styling and markup, making them tough to use in a truly modular fashion. We weren’t satisfied, so we made a thing that doesn’t do that.
Typeplate is a “typographic starter kit”. We don’t make aesthetic design choices, but define proper markup with extensible styling for common typographic patterns. A stripped-down Sass library concerned with the appropriate technical implementation of design patterns—not how they look.
For our base we use the following font settings on our HTML element to standardize the typographic scale in a consistent manner. We also make sure not to use united values for our line-heights per the recommendations of Mr. Eric Meyer himself.
Sass
$weight: normal;
$line-height: 1.65;
$font-size: 112.5; // percentage value (16 * 112.5% = 18px)
$font-base: 16 * ($font-size/100); // converts our percentage to a pixel value
$font-family: serif;
$font-family-sans: sans-serif;
$font-properties: $weight, $line-height, $font-size, $font-family;
//the serif boolean var can be redeclared from another stylesheet. However
//the var must be placed after your @import "typeplate.scss";
$serif-boolean: true !default;
@mixin base-type($weight, $line-height, $font-size, $font-family...) {
@if $serif-boolean {
font: $weight #{$font-size}%/#{$line-height} $font-family;
}@else {
font: $weight #{$font-size}%/#{$line-height} $font-family-sans;
}
}
html {
@include base-type($font-properties...);
}
Establish clearly distinguishable heading levels with font-size. Don’t randomly pick font sizes, choose a type hierarchy that is harmonious and consistent. Always use a modular scale that calculates those sizes from a ratio ensuring your design and typography can relate in a meaningful way. There’s an excellent calculator for this at modularscale.com.
By using culturally relevant, historically pleasing ratios to create modular scales and basing the measurements in our compositions on values from those scales, we can achieve a visual harmony not found in layouts that use arbitrary, conventional, or easily divisible numbers.
Just like in print, don’t use the darkest black available in your body text (#000). Instead, go for something softer, like #444. You can use a slightly darker color for titles (#222).
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Odio iste voluptates saepe ipsa magni repellendus explicabo numquam expedita dolore eveniet accusantium iure sit consequatur? Dolore minus vel blanditiis velit deserunt! We’ll also be checking a few things like the longest word in the world “Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginylisoleucine” and other stuff like links that are way long such as “Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginylisoleucine” and other long links like http://192.168.1.100/somedirectory/stayout/of/my/shit
Sass
// Silent Sass Classes - A.K.A Placeholders
//
// normal: Indicates that lines may only break at normal word break points.
// break-word : Indicates that normally unbreakable words may be broken at ...
// arbitrary points if there are no otherwise acceptable break points in the line.
%breakword {
word-wrap: break-word;
}
%normal-wrap {
word-wrap: normal;
}
%auto-wrap {
word-wrap: auto;
}
body {
@extend %breakword;
}
On the web, paragraphs are commonly set in blocks, with top and bottom margins. Historically, paragraphs are set using indentation, which makes it easier to scan long-form text and are (we think) more conducive to readability.
I crawled out almost immediately, and crouched, my feet still in the water, under a clump of furze. The horse lay motionless (his neck was broken, poor brute!) and by the lightning flashes I saw the black bulk of the overturned dog cart and the silhouette of the wheel still spinning slowly. In another moment the colossal mechanism went striding by me, and passed uphill towards Pyrford.
Seen nearer, the Thing was incredibly strange, for it was no mere insensate machine driving on its way. Machine it was, with a ringing metallic pace, and long, flexible, glittering tentacles (one of which gripped a young pine tree) swinging and rattling about its strange body.
It picked its road as it went striding along, and the brazen hood that surmounted it moved to and fro with the inevitable suggestion of a head looking about. Behind the main body was a huge mass of white metal like a gigantic fisherman’s basket, and puffs of green smoke squirted out from the joints of the limbs as the monster swept by me. And in an instant it was gone.
So much I saw then, all vaguely for the flickering of the lightning, in blinding highlights and dense black shadows.
As it passed it set up an exultant deafening howl that drowned the thunder—“Aloo! Aloo!”—and in another minute it was with its companion, half a mile away, stooping over something in the field. I have no doubt this Thing in the field was the third of the ten cylinders they had fired at us from Mars.
Responsive or not, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t all be designing and building sites on flexible foundations. In a fluid layout, browser width and typographic measure are linked: the wider the viewport, the more characters per line. Keeping in mind that a range of 45-75 characters per line is generally accepted as safe for comfortable reading, there are a few things that can be done to avoid extra long lines of text in fluid layouts. Robert Bringhurst recommends for us to leave at least two characters behind and take at least three forward.
Since hyphens is an inherited property, it isn’t sufficient to set it for a limited number of elements and assume you’re done. You have to make sure you’ve turned it off for the elements that shouldn’t be hyphenated.
Small caps help to make abbreviations way easier to read but won’t stand out from the text. We highly suggest this bit of typographic flare with your content. True small capitals are now possible on the web, but alas they are still a bitch and will also depend on the type face in use. Definitely check out Open Typography for those typefaces and services that provide authentic small caps.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur HTML adipisicing elit. CSS Laboriosam voluptatem a beatae accusantium accusamus dolor provident error consectetur quibusdam suscipit neque temporibus. Velit omnis voluptatum quasi tempora reiciendis expedita reprehenderit.
HTML
<abbr title="hyper text markup language">HTML</abbr>
Sass
@mixin smallcaps($color, $font-weight) {
// depends on the font family.
// some font-families don’t support small caps
// or don’t provide them with their web font.
font-variant: small-caps;
font-weight: $font-weight;
text-transform: lowercase;
color: $color;
}
abbr {
@include smallcaps(gray, 600);
&:hover {
cursor: help;
}
}
A Drop Cap is the art of using an uppercase glyph to mark the start of copy. A technique that has been around for almost two thousand years!
There now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by wharves as Indian isles by coral reefs—commerce surrounds it with her surf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme downtown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of land. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.
HTML
<p class="drop-cap">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. Unde in aliquid rem. Esse laboriosam nisi quas eveniet atque consequatur perferendis nostrum dignissimos magni cum suscipit delectus nam placeat qui rem.</p>
Sass
// Use ‘@include dropcap()’ with any selector. Pass in your own custom
// arguments or feel free to use the arguments we’ve provided.
@mixin dropcap($float: left, $font-size: 4em, $font-family: inherit, $text-indent: 0, $margin: inherit, $padding: inherit, $color: inherit, $lineHeight: 1, $bg: transparent) {
&:first-letter {
float: $float;
margin: $margin;
padding: $padding;
font-size: $font-size;
font-family: $font-family;
line-height: $lineHeight;
text-indent: $text-indent;
background: $bg;
color: $color;
}
}
// Including the @mixin with our .drop-cap class purely for demo purposes.
// Not included in the actual Typeplate Sass or CSS download.
.drop-cap {
@include dropcap($margin: 0 .5em auto 0, $padding: .5em, $color: #fff, $bg: #333);
}
With the unicode-range property we can avoid using verbose markup and only target the characters we like according to the unicode unique identifier. We also harness the power of the %placeholder in Sass allowing like minded selectors to string together this shared property in a DRY way from one single declaration. Copy and paste the Sass below into Codepen and check out the output for yourself. Hint: create multiple classes.
Amper & Sands
Sass
//Unicode Ampersand @font-face
$amp-fontface-name: Ampersand;
$amp-fontface-source: local('Georgia'), local('Garamond'), local('Palatino'), local('Book Antiqua');
$amp-fontface-fallback: local('Georgia');
// Allows for our ampersand element to have differing
// font-family from the ampersand unicode font-family.
$amp-font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;
@font-face {
font-family: '#{$amp-fontface-name}';
src: $amp-fontface-source;
unicode-range: U+0026;
}
// Ampersand fallback font for unicode range
@font-face {
font-family: '#{$amp-fontface-name}';
src: $amp-fontface-fallback;
unicode-range: U+270C;
}
@mixin ampersand($amp-font-family...) {
font-family: $amp-font-family;
}
%ampersand-placeholder {
@include ampersand($amp-fontface-name, $amp-font-family);
}
// Call your ampersand on any element you wish from another stylesheet
// using this Sass extend we’ve provided.
.amp {
@extend %ampersand-placeholder;
}
The small element is used to represent side comments or what’s commonly referred to as ‘small print’: disclaimers, caveats, legal restrictions, or copyrights. It can also be used for attributions or satisfying licensing requirements.
small is now for side comments, which are the inline equivalent of aside—content which is not the main focus of the page. A common example is inline legalese, such as a copyright statement in a page footer, a disclaimer, or licensing information. It can also be used for attribution. Don’t use it for block-level content (paragraphs, lists, etc.), as this would be considered main content.
small text does not need to be smaller than surrounding text—if all you want is smaller text use CSS instead. Use small only on inline content.
Monospace fonts just like you like for all your code block dreams! Monospace fonts or “fixed pitch” fonts, contain characters that all have the same character width. ‘l’, ‘1’ and ‘i’ are easily distinguished with monospace, ‘0’, ‘o’ and ‘O’ are easily distinguished and clear punctuation characters, especially braces, parenthesis and brackets.
Fig. 4.2 | Type Anatomy, an excerpt from Mark Boulton’s book “Designing for the Web”
HTML
<figure>
<figcaption>
<strong>Fig. 4.2 | </strong>Type Anatomy, an excerpt from Mark Boulton's book<cite title="http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/book/part3/part3_chapter11.php">“Designing for the Web”</cite>
</figcaption>
</figure>
The blockquote element represents a section that is being quoted from another source.
“Embracing the fluid & flexible aspect of responsive web design was an easy decision, but I’ve been less sure-footed when it comes to balancing that with setting type on the web”
Pull Quotes are tricky, but with this little ditty they’re not so difficult or tedious anymore. The example is an improvement based upon the 24 ways article discussing swooshy curly quotes without images. This particular example depicted takes advantage of psuedo selectors and the <aside> tag.
The sites we’ve built to display on a desktop, smartphone, or a tablet today could be on a TV Screen, coffee table display, or mega space yacht projection system tomorrow. Do yourself a favor and heed the advice of the Dao: A fully-scalable web1
HTML
<!-- Footnote Markup : Replace ‘X” with your unique number for each footnote -->
<article>
<p><sup><a href="#fn-itemX" id="fn-returnX"></a></sup></p>
<footer>
<ol class="foot-notes">
<li id="fn-itemX"><a href="#fn-returnX">↩</a></li>
</ol>
</footer>
</article>
The dl element is for another type of list called a definition list. Instead of list items, the content of a dl consists of dt (Definition Term) and dd (Definition Description) pairs.
TypePlate offers several different patterns for definition lists. In all three of the examples below, the contents of dts are wrapped in b tags, and a class of .micro is given to the contents of dds. First is the default format for definitions lists.
a) Multi-line Definitions (default)
This is a term
this is the definition of that term, which both live in a dl.
Another Term
And it gets a definition too, which is this line
This is a 2nd definition for a single term. A dt may be followed by multiple dds.
HTML
<dl>
<dt><b></b></dt>
<dd></dd>
</dl>
b) Inline Definitions
The second format for definition lists is lining. This style is more robust, with support for multiple terms defined by a single definition, and applies proper punctuation (: ,) where appropriate:
This is a term
this is the definition of that term, which both live in a dl.
Another Term
And it gets a definition too, which is this line
this is a 2nd definition for a single term.
Term
Other Defined Term
dt terms may stand on their own without an accompanying dd, but in that case they share descriptions with the next available dt. You may not have a dd without a parent dt.
The third format for definition lists is dictionary. This style is more a formal, applying proper punctuation where necessary and includes ordinal indicators:
This is a term
this is the definition of that term, which both live in a dl.
Another Term
And it gets a definition too, which is this line
this is a 2nd definition for a single term.
Term
Other Defined Term
dt terms may stand on their own without an accompanying dd, but in that case they share descriptions with the next available dt. You may not have a dd without a parent dt.
