Fluid Typography with Clamp CSS Function

Fluid typography is where the font-size dynamically change size and line-height according to the viewport width.

Fluid typography in CSS refers to the practice of designing text elements with relative units like percentages or viewport units, rather than fixed pixel values. This approach allows the font size to scale smoothly based on the dimensions of the viewport or the parent container. The goal is to create a more adaptable and responsive typographic system.

Benefits of fluid typography in user interface design include:

1. Responsive Design: Fluid typography ensures that text elements adjust proportionally to different screen sizes and devices, providing a consistent reading experience.

2. Improved Readability: By dynamically adjusting font size based on the available space, fluid typography can enhance readability across various devices, preventing issues like text becoming too small or too large.

3. Accessibility: Fluid typography supports better accessibility by accommodating users who may need to adjust text size preferences. It aligns with principles of inclusive design.

4. Consistency: The relative scaling of fonts helps maintain a harmonious visual hierarchy, keeping the relationships between different text elements consistent as the layout adapts.

5. Future-Proofing: As new devices and screen sizes emerge, fluid typography offers a more future-proof solution compared to fixed font sizes, as it naturally adjusts to different environments.

By embracing fluid typography, designers can create more flexible and user-friendly interfaces that gracefully adapt to the diverse landscape of devices and screen sizes.

Take the following code where we set the font-size of paragraphs to 4% of the viewports width. Although this is lovely and fluid the problem is the fonts get too big and too small as the screen gets larger and smaller. For example, if the browser width is 904px the font size is 36px. Way too big.

p {
  font-size: 4vw;
}

Using Clamp() for fluid typography

Take the following code which uses the css clamp function to set the min(16px) and max(22px) font-size. Furthermore, we through in some calc to multiply the font-size by 1.5 to archive fluid line-height.

p {
  font-size: clamp(16px, 4vw, 22px);
  line-height: clamp(calc(16px * 1.5), 4vw, calc(22px * 1.5));
}