Typography

Classic Typography Principles

Vertical Rhythm

Your line-height should be the base unit for ALL vertical spacing. If body text has line-height: 1.5 on 16px type (= 24px), spacing values should be multiples of 24px. This creates subconscious harmony; text and space share a mathematical foundation.

Modular Scale & Hierarchy

The common mistake: too many font sizes that are too close together (14px, 15px, 16px, 18px...). This creates muddy hierarchy.

Use fewer sizes with more contrast. A 5-size system covers most needs:

Popular ratios: 1.25 (major third), 1.333 (perfect fourth), 1.5 (perfect fifth). Pick one and commit.

Readability & Measure

Use ch units for character-based measure (max-width: 65ch). Line-height scales inversely with line length: narrow columns need tighter leading, wide columns need more.

Non-obvious: Light text on dark backgrounds needs compensation on three axes, not just one. Bump line-height by 0.05–0.1, add a touch of letter-spacing (0.01–0.02em), and optionally step the body weight up one notch (regular → medium). The perceived weight drops across all three; fix all three.

Paragraph rhythm: Pick either space between paragraphs OR first-line indentation. Never both. Digital usually wants space; editorial/long-form can justify indent-only.

Font Selection & Pairing

The tactical selection procedure and the reflex-reject list live in reference/brand.md under Font selection procedure and Reflex-reject list (loaded for brand-register tasks). The rest of this section covers the adjacent knowledge: anti-reflex corrections, system font use, and pairing rules.

Anti-reflexes worth defending against

• A technical/utilitarian brief does NOT need a serif "for warmth." Most tech tools should look like tech tools.
• An editorial/premium brief does NOT need the same expressive serif everyone is using right now. Premium can be Swiss-modern, can be neo-grotesque, can be a literal monospace, can be a quiet humanist sans.
• A children's product does NOT need a rounded display font. Kids' books use real type.
• A "modern" brief does NOT need a geometric sans. The most modern thing you can do is not use the font everyone else is using.

System fonts are underrated: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", system-ui looks native, loads instantly, and is highly readable. Consider this for apps where performance > personality.

Pairing Principles

The non-obvious truth: You often don't need a second font. One well-chosen font family in multiple weights creates cleaner hierarchy than two competing typefaces. Only add a second font when you need genuine contrast (e.g., display headlines + body serif).

When pairing, contrast on multiple axes:

• Serif + Sans (structure contrast)
• Geometric + Humanist (personality contrast)
• Condensed display + Wide body (proportion contrast)

Never pair fonts that are similar but not identical (e.g., two geometric sans-serifs). They create visual tension without clear hierarchy.

Web Font Loading

The layout shift problem: fonts load late, text reflows, and users see content jump. Here's the fix:

/* 1. Use font-display: swap for visibility */
@font-face {
  font-family: 'CustomFont';
  src: url('font.woff2') format('woff2');
  font-display: swap;
}

/* 2. Match fallback metrics to minimize shift */
@font-face {
  font-family: 'CustomFont-Fallback';
  src: local('Arial');
  size-adjust: 105%;        /* Scale to match x-height */
  ascent-override: 90%;     /* Match ascender height */
  descent-override: 20%;    /* Match descender depth */
  line-gap-override: 10%;   /* Match line spacing */
}

body {
  font-family: 'CustomFont', 'CustomFont-Fallback', sans-serif;
}

Tools like Fontaine calculate these overrides automatically.

swap vs optional: swap shows fallback text immediately and FOUT-swaps when the web font arrives. optional uses the fallback if the web font misses a small load budget (~100ms) and avoids the shift entirely. Pick optional when zero layout shift matters more than seeing the branded font on slow networks.

Preload the critical weight only: typically the regular-weight body font used above the fold. Preloading every weight costs more bandwidth than it saves.

Variable fonts for 3+ weights or styles: a single variable font file is usually smaller than three static weight files, gives fractional weight control, and pairs well with font-optical-sizing: auto. For 1–2 weights, static is fine.

Modern Web Typography

Fluid Type

Fluid typography via clamp(min, preferred, max) scales text smoothly with the viewport. The middle value (e.g., 5vw + 1rem) controls scaling rate (higher vw = faster scaling). Add a rem offset so it doesn't collapse to 0 on small screens.

Use fluid type for: Headings and display text on marketing/content pages where text dominates the layout and needs to breathe across viewport sizes.

Use fixed rem scales for: App UIs, dashboards, and data-dense interfaces. No major app design system (Material, Polaris, Primer, Carbon) uses fluid type in product UI; fixed scales with optional breakpoint adjustments give the spatial predictability that container-based layouts need. Body text should also be fixed even on marketing pages, since the size difference across viewports is too small to warrant it.

Bound your clamp(): keep max-size ≤ ~2.5 × min-size. Wider ratios break the browser's zoom and reflow behaviour and make large viewports feel like the page is shouting.

Scale container width and font-size together so effective character measure stays in the 45–75ch band at every viewport. A heading that widens faster than its container drifts out of the comfortable measure at the top end.

OpenType Features

Most developers don't know these exist. Use them for polish:

/* Tabular numbers for data alignment */
.data-table { font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums; }

/* Proper fractions */
.recipe-amount { font-variant-numeric: diagonal-fractions; }

/* Small caps for abbreviations */
abbr { font-variant-caps: all-small-caps; }

/* Disable ligatures in code */
code { font-variant-ligatures: none; }

/* Enable kerning (usually on by default, but be explicit) */
body { font-kerning: normal; }

Check what features your font supports at Wakamai Fondue.

Rendering polish

/* Even out heading line lengths (browser picks better break points) */
h1, h2, h3 { text-wrap: balance; }

/* Reduce orphans and ragged endings in long prose */
article p { text-wrap: pretty; }

/* Variable fonts: pick the right optical-size master automatically */
body { font-optical-sizing: auto; }

ALL-CAPS tracking: capitals sit too close at default spacing. Add 5–12% letter-spacing (letter-spacing: 0.05em to 0.12em) to short all-caps labels, eyebrows, and small headings. Real small caps (via font-variant-caps) need the same treatment, slightly gentler.

Typography System Architecture

Name tokens semantically (--text-body, --text-heading), not by value (--font-size-16). Include font stacks, size scale, weights, line-heights, and letter-spacing in your token system.

Accessibility Considerations

Beyond contrast ratios (which are well-documented), consider:

• Never disable zoom: user-scalable=no breaks accessibility. If your layout breaks at 200% zoom, fix the layout.
• Use rem/em for font sizes: This respects user browser settings. Never px for body text.
• Minimum 16px body text: Smaller than this strains eyes and fails WCAG on mobile.
• Adequate touch targets: Text links need padding or line-height that creates 44px+ tap targets.

Avoid: More than 2-3 font families per project. Skipping fallback font definitions. Ignoring font loading performance (FOUT/FOIT). Using decorative fonts for body text.