Type Director

Type Director is a SASS framework that generates a responsive, modular, nuanced typographic system from only a few key variables.

1. Modular. Typographic measurements are based on proportional lists of values.
2. Responsive. Typography adjusts to the unique constraints of each breakpoint.
3. Nuanced. Various properties allow detail-oriented typographers to align additional fonts or uppercase styles to a modular scale.

• Terminal: gem install type-director
• Compass config.rb: require 'type-director'
• SCSS: @import 'type-director';

Or create a new project with a sample config and type specimen:

• Terminal: compass create project-name -r type-director --using type-director

Typefaces associate a font-family with various typeface-specific adjustments. Define them via SASS maps in the following format:

$typefaces: (

	// Default typeface
	"georgia": (
		"family": (Georgia, serif),
		"font-size-adjustment": 1.00,
		"line-height-adjustment": 1.00
	),

	// Additional typefaces
	"verdana": (
		"family": (Verdana, sans-serif),
		"font-size-adjustment": 0.89,
		"line-height-adjustment": 0.94
	),

	"feather": (
		"family": ("Feather"),
		"font-size-adjustment": 1.00,
		"line-height-adjustment": 1.00
	)
)

Oftentimes two typfaces set to the same font-size do not appear to be. This is because the heights of their lowercase letters are not equal. By using the font-size-adjustment property, additional typefaces can be normalized to the default typeface. This will ensure they align to the modular scale.

For example, Verdana appears 11% larger than Georgia. To normalize it with Georgia, we can set a font-size-adjustment: 0.89. This will cause Verdana to be 11% smaller than Georgia when set to the same size.

Similarly, you can also apply an adjustment to line-height on a typeface-by-typeface basis by specifying a line-height-adjustment.

Environments associate media queries with a modular type scale. Define them via SASS maps in the following format:

$environments: (

	// Phone sizes 
	"phone": (
		"base-font-size": 16px,
		"base-line-height": 1.5,
		"max-font-size": 28px,
		"max-line-height": 1.35
	),

	// Tablet sizes and larger 
	"tablet": (
		"media-query": "screen and (min-width: 768px)",
		"base-font-size": 18px,
		"base-line-height": 1.6,
		"max-font-size": 42px,
		"max-line-height": 1.25
	)
);

For each environment, you'll need to specify font-size and line-height for both a base size and a max size. The type scale for each environment will be interpolated from these constraints.

A media-query property should also be set for each environment, except for the environment you'd like to be default.

$typography: td-typography(

	"typefaces": $typefaces,
	"environments": $environments,

	// Other than the base, how many type sizes do you need?
	"numb-smaller-sizes": 1,
	"numb-larger-sizes": 4
);

That's it! Note that $typography is a key variable. This map will be used by the following mixins to lookup and apply sizes.

If you need a bit of typographic guidance, Responsive Typography: The Basics by Information Architects is an excellent read.

Use @include td-responsive-type-size($typface-name, $size) to apply a responsive size. The type sizes available to you are based on your parameters:

• 0 is your base size.
• 1, 2, 3... are your increasingly larger sizes.
• -1, -2, -3... are your increasingly smaller sizes.

.lead {
	@include td-responsive-type-size("georgia", 1);
}

We just applied responsive styling to the lead paragraph style. It will use media queries to apply Georgia at size 1 from the corresponding scale: 18.4px for phone, and then resizing to 22.2px for tablets and larger.

.h4 { 
	@include td-responsive-type-size("verdana", 1);
}

We used the same size for the .h4 heading, but with Verdana. This will result in a font-size of 16.4px for phones and 19.8px for tablets and larger. Mathematically different than Georgia at size 1, but visually equal.

You might occassionally want finer-grained control of your type styles. For these cases, use the td-type-size() mixin which accepts an additional $environment-name parameter:

.h4 { 
	@include td-font-size("verdana", 1, "phone");
	@include td-font-size("verdana", 2, "tablet");
}

Here we just applied size 1 for phones and size 2 for tablets. If we had used td-set-responsive-font-size() the same size would have been applied for each environment.

Rounding to any precision is supported.

$environments: (

	"phone": (
		"base-font-size": 16px,
		"base-line-height": 1.5,
		"max-font-size": 28px,
		"max-line-height": 1.35,
		"font-size-precision": 0.1,
		"line-height-precision": 0.01
	),

	// ...
);

Oftentimes you may need to set very narrow lines of text, causing your line-height to look too loose. For a tighter line-height, use the "line-height": "tight" option.

.caption-tight { 
	@include td-responsive-type-size("verdana", -1, $opts: ("line-height": "tight"));
}

Other times you may want to set text to be solid (meaning no "leading"). In terms of CSS, this setting the line-height to be equal to the font-size. To do this, use the "line-height": "solid" option.

.btn { 
	@include td-responsive-type-size("verdana", 1, $opts: ("line-height": "solid"));
}

If you'd like to set something in all caps and have it align to your type scales, include an uppercase-adjustment when defining fonts:

$typefaces: (

	"verdana": (
		"family": (Verdana, sans-serif),
		"font-size-adjustment": 0.89,
		"line-height-adjustment": 0.94,
		"uppercase-adjustment": 0.85
	),

	// ...
)

Apply an uppercase style like so:

.h4 { 
	@include td-responsive-type-size("verdana", 1, $opts: ("uppercase": true));
}