Typographic Scaling
An experiment in making modular typographic scales for responsive web design.
Desktops have large margins
and lots of whitespace,
which can be balanced
with an aggresive
typographic scale.
This scale is set to a ratio of 6:5, which is the same as the a Minor Third scale in music. This makes the first header about 3 times larger than that of the paragraph. Every header in between is scaled proportionally, which takes the guess work out of picking the sizes.
Mobile devices are
narrow and tight.
They require
a more subtle
gradation.
I have used a scale of 9:8 for mobile. This is also a scale found in music, known as a Major Second. The decision to use music scales was mainly done because it sounds nice, but also because their value on the fifth step was close to what I wanted for the font size of my first header.
Also note that the paragraphs are the same size for both viewports.