Achieving Perfect Vertical Rhythm in Web Browsers
T ypography and layout play a crucial role in creating visually appealing and readable web designs. One concept that has always fascinated me is vertical rhythm, the consistent vertical spacing of text and elements across a web page. Want to see vertical rhythm in action? Click here to unleash the magic. Back in 2015, my friend Rob Turlinckx introduced me to this concept, sparking a journey of exploration that led me to develop tools for effectively implementing vertical rhythm in modern web browsers.
In the early stages of my experimentation, I found some success in aligning headings and paragraphs within isolated sections, such as feature cards. However, maintaining consistent vertical rhythm throughout an entire page proved challenging. My initial attempts relied on visual approximations, tweaking margins and padding until things looked right. This process was both time-consuming and imprecise.
The turning point came in early 2020 when I discovered the Plumber project. It introduced me to the crucial concept of baseline ratio, a critical piece of the vertical rhythm puzzle that had previously eluded me. Inspired by Plumber and driven by my long-standing goal of achieving perfect vertical rhythm, I developed rhythm-sass. This tool, which powers the typography on this page, enables precise vertical rhythm implementation by utilizing font baseline ratios. While I completed the core functionality shortly after this breakthrough, I only recently finalized the documentation and made it publicly available. As a result, rhythm-sass has been validated through multiple production cases.
