Modular scaleEdit

Modular scale is the application of historically/culturally pleasing ratios to type and layout. For example, we can take a base value (like 14px) and scale it upwards and downwards in steps of 1.618 (the golden ratio), or some other ratio such as a musical interval.

We can superimpose another scale (using a different base value and ratio) to produce a "double-stranded" scale.

Resources

• Original talk by Tim Brown at Build 2010: http://vimeo.com/17079380
• Tim's "A List Apart" article: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/more-meaningful-typography/
• Tim's calculator: http://modularscale.com/
• Dead simple example of using Sass mix-ins to produce modular scaling: http://mrandmrsok.com/blog/modular-scale-calculator-using-scss
• Full fledged Compass (RubyGem)/Sass (SCSS) modular scaling library: https://github.com/scottkellum/modular-scale
• Typeplate take on modular scaling: http://typeplate.com/#base-type