Scale & Rhythm

This page is both an essay and a tool. It sets out to explore how two, intertwined concepts, often playful but sometimes cheeky, can be encouraged to dance in web pages. Drag the colored boxes along the scale to throw these words anew. For the most part, this text is just a libretto for the performance you are about to play upon it.

Typographical Music

Don't compose without a scale. These words were written not in reference to choosing notes of music, but rather, to selecting a harmonious series of type sizes. In The Elements of Typographic Style, author Robert Bringhurst includes this principle as one of the old, well-traveled roads at the core of the tradition.

Of course, good typesetting is something more than selecting a series of sizes, just as music consists of something more than well-chosen notes. Rhythm, in particular, enables a sequence of notes to beat with musical life, and tempo sustains their wit. It is much the same for the world of letters.

Vertical Tempo

Most pages of continuous prose pulse with a particular vertical rhythm, established by the lines of its main words, sentences, and paragraphs. If a subheading is set in a different size than the rest of the main text, it needs to be offset in a way that flows with the page's intrinsic rhythm.

For this, Bringhurst suggests another rule of thumb: Add and delete vertical space in measured intervals. When sized correctly, the vertical spacing around a chunk of larger text can act like the rests in a musical score, allowing the main text to resume on beat.

Size and rhythm make each other interesting. Now it's time to explore how to weave them into web pages. Bear in mind these words are meant to be chewed on more as appetizers than something like a final course. They offer a path, trampled in the hopes of offering passage - not to an automatic destination, but to places for possible, conscious, even mischievous departure.

• Pages
• About
• Element Examples
• Example Images