Responsive Type Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated

Building a type scale for your website

on Winging It episode 29 with Stacy, Miriam, & James on February 19, 2026 | 60 min

Miriam has spent a lot of time digging into the different approaches, the math involved, the user implications, and the ways modern CSS can help us out. There are equations and graphs! But you don’t need anything that complicated to build a type scale for your next site. With the right units, we can get excellent results from a few lines of (readable) code – without relying on third party tools.

Check out our Typography Playlist today.

Subscribe to Channel »

What We Cover:

My base rule is that we want to avoid unit conversions
- If we’re talking about pixels, use pixels
- If we’re talking about relative sizes, use relative units
How do we work with the user default font size? [12:05]
- How it’s often been done: a multiple of the user’s size, calculated
- My approach: Just say the size I want, but clamped by the user
How will the font respond to viewport sizes? [19:00]
- Big ol’ warning about zoom and viewports
  - We don’t know if it’s a small screen or a zoomed screen
  - See how zoom becomes less effective as we add responsiveness [21:53]
- Rules:
  - Never change the font size more than 2.5x based on the window [31:00]
  - Fluid type always starts with a base size
- If you know the breakpoints, set the breakpoints, it’s easier
- For a fluid approach, don’t worry about the exact breakpoints
How do we generate a ‘scale’ of relative font-sizes?
- Using the pow() function!
How do our scales scale?! Making the scale itself responsive
- Using a breakpoint is the easiest option
Bonus material:
- Spacing relative to both the screen and text

Recent Episodes

Winging It post type

Surprising Effects of CSS Shorthands

on Winging It episode 32 with Stacy & Miriam on May 28 | 45 min

CSS properties come in two excellent flavors – longhand properties have a direct impact on the element, while shorthand properties take a much more convoluted path. There’s a lot going on when we use a shorthand property, with hidden surprises, and reasons we might use one or the other.

see all Winging It posts
Winging It post type

Dos & Don’ts of Anchor Positioning

on Winging It episode 31 with Stacy, Miriam, & James on Apr 16 | 41 min

CSS anchor positioning isn’t baseline yet, and there’s good reason for that. You can use it, but it comes with some caveats. James, Stacy, and Miriam cover new resources to make anchor positioning easier, and work through some demos to help you understand how anchor positioning works. We also look…

see all Winging It posts
Winging It post type

Quick & Easy UI Wins (for real)

Hidden gems of UI development

on Winging It episode 30 with Stacy, Miriam, & James on Mar 19 | 49 min

Join Stacy, James, and Miriam as we explore some hidden gems of UI development – from @starting-style for smoother entry transitions to performance boosts with AVIF images and using the browser’s built-in lazy-loading. We cover a variety of quick wins that you can use to make your life easier and…

see all Winging It posts