The 2023 Guide to Responsive Typography Sizes and Scales

The true responsiveness of your website design is more than a framework that scales to every device, it also requires typography to adapt to optimal readability as well.

Responsive typography will adjust so that text elements also change size and scale on websites. While this is the technical answer, there is also a larger design approach that is equally important, because just changing the size of a text element is not always enough.

Let’s dive into responsive typography best practices, some guidelines, and some tools to help you create great type at any size.

Responsive Typography Primer

A solid responsive typography plan will ensure that your content is readable on different devices. This ensures that you have developed a set of rules for interaction, size and scale that will help everything render across devices.

The good thing about this is that for most websites it’s almost two sizes: desktop and mobile. (Overall tablet use for general web browsing has dropped dramatically in recent years.)

A font and scale that looks good on a wide screen may not display well on a vertically oriented handheld screen size.

Now here is the challenge. A font and scale that looks good on a wide screen may not display well on a vertically oriented handheld screen size. This can dictate your font choices and how you plan the site. (Otherwise, you may need to switch fonts between desktop and mobile, which is not recommended.)

As you plan the design, it’s important to think about...