clamp() Calculator · Chris Burnell
Like a little mini Utopia:
Handy little tool for calculating viewport-based clamped values.
Link tags: fluid
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Designing a Utopian layout grid: Working with fluid responsive values in a static design tool. | Utopia
James describes his process for designing fluid grid layouts, which very much involves working with the grain of the web but against the grain of our design tools:
In 2022 our design tools are still based around fixed-size artboards, while we’re trying to design products which scale gracefully to suit any screen.
Building the new Utopia homepage | Trys Mudford
Trys has written up how he made that nifty little resizing widget on the Utopia homepage.
Utopian project kickstarter — Figma
Do you like the ideas behind Utopia? Do you use Figma?
If the answer to both those questions is “yes”, then James has made a very handy Figma community file for you:
This work-in-progress is intended as a starting point for designers to start exploring the Utopia approach, thinking about type and space in fluid scales rather than device-based breakpoints.
Min-Max-Value Interpolation
Here’s a really nice little tool inspired by Utopia for generating one-off clamp() values for fluid type or spacing.
Fluid Type Scale - Generate responsive font-size variables
This is kind of a Utopia lite: pop in your minimum and maximum font sizes along with a modular scale and it spits out some custom properties for clamp() declarations.
Contextual Spacing For Intrinsic Web Design | Modern CSS Solutions
To complement her talk at Beyond Tellerrand, Stephanie goes through some of the powerful CSS features that enable intrinsic web design. These are all great tools for the declarative design approach I was talking about:
Be the browser’s mentor, not its micromanager. - Build Excellent Websites
This one-page site that Andy has made to illustrate his talk at All Day Hey is exactly what I was talking about with declarative design.
Give the browser some solid rules and hints, then let it make the right decisions for the people that visit it, based on their device, connection quality and capabilities. This is how they will get a genuinely great user experience, rather than a fragmented, broken one.
Thoughts on Exerting Control With Media Queries - Jim Nielsen’s Blog
Some thoughts on CSS, media queries, and fluid type prompted by Utopia:
We say CSS is “declarative”, but the more and more I write breakpoints to accommodate all the different ways a design can change across the viewport spectrum, the more I feel like I’m writing imperative code. At what quantity does a set of declarative rules begin to look like imperative instructions?
In contrast, one of the principles of Utopia is to be declarative and “describe what is to be done rather than command how to do it”. This approach declares a set of rules such that you could pick any viewport width and, using a formula, derive what the type size and spacing would be at that size.
Utopia - an introduction - YouTube
James and Trys have made this terrific explanatory video about Utopia. They pack a lot into less than twenty minutes but it’s all very clearly and methodically explained.
Fluid type sizes and spacing — Piper Haywood
Prompted by Utopia, Piper shares her methodology for fluid type in Sass.
Meet Utopia: Designing And Building With Fluid Type And Space Scales — Smashing Magazine
An excellent explainer from Trys and James of their supersmart Utopia approach:
Utopia encourages the curation of a system small enough to be held in short-term memory, rather than one so sprawling it must be constantly referred to.
Fluid Space Calculator | Utopia
Type and space are linked, so if you’re going to have a fluid type calculator, it makes sense to have a fluid space calculator too. More great work from Trys and James!
Continuous Typography / MK
Sounds like some convergent thinking with the ideas behind Utopia.
I think that the idea that that any typographic attribute (including variable font parameters) can be a function (linear, exponential, stepped, Bezier, random, or otherwise) of any given input variable (user preference, screen dimensions, connection speed, time of day, display language, or whatever else) is an incredibly powerful one, and worth exploring as an aesthetic as well as a technical proposition.
Here’s a demo you can play with.
Clamp | Utopia
Trys has been investigating how to incorporate CSS clamp() into the brilliant Utopia project. I won’t pretend to understand all the maths here—this is a very deep dive!
He’s also created a CSS generator Mark 2 if you want to use clamp() in your fluid type.
Takin’ five. — Ethan Marcotte
I linked to the first of Ethan’s short videos on accessibility last week, but it’s well worth checking out all five:
Responsive web design turns ten. — Ethan Marcotte
2010 was quite a year:
And exactly three weeks after Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 For Web Designers was first published, “Responsive Web Design” went live in A List Apart.
Nothing’s been quite the same since.
I remember being at that An Event Apart in Seattle where Ethan first unveiled the phrase and marvelling at how well everything just clicked into place, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist. I was in. 100%.
Fluid scale and tokens: a match made in heaven - Andy Bell
Andy takes Utopia for a spin—it very much matches his approach.
Utopia
This is the project that Trys and James have been working on at Clearleft. It’s a way of approaching modular scales in web typography that uses CSS locks and custom properties to fantastic effect.
Utopia is not a product, a plugin, or a framework. It’s a memorable/pretentious word we use to refer to a way of thinking about fluid responsive design.
Fractional. — Ethan Marcotte
Ethan’s ode to the fr unit in CSS grid.