Using Typography.js

This guide covers how to use Typography.js in a Gatsby project.

Typography.js

Typography.js is a JavaScript library that allows you to explore the typographic design of your website and define beautiful custom and pre-existing typographic themes. It enables you to change the font on your website with ease. Typography.js currently maintains over 30 themes for you to use. You can also create your own custom font themes if no available themes fit your requirements. To use Typography.js in your project, you will be installing a Gatsby plugin and specifying a configuration object for Typography.js.

Installing the Typography.js plugin

Gatsby has the plugin gatsby-plugin-typography to integrate Typography.js into your project.

You can install the plugin and its peer dependencies into your project by running the following command:

After the installation of the plugin is complete, navigate to your gatsby-config.js file located in the root of your project’s directory and add the plugin to the configuration:

gatsby-plugin-typography takes two options for you to specify:

• pathToConfigModule (string): The path to the file where you export your Typography.js configuration.
• omitGoogleFont (boolean, default: false): By default, Typography.js includes a helper that makes a request to Google Font’s CDN for fonts you need. You may want to use your own fonts, either by injecting fonts or using a CDN of your choosing. By setting omitGoogleFont: true, gatsby-plugin-typography will skip adding the font helper. Instead, you will have to include the appropriate fonts yourself - see Adding a Local Font

Creating the Typography configuration

Now that you have added the plugin, create the directory src/utils/ if it does not already exist in your project and add a new file named typography.js. You will use this file to specify the Typography.js configuration and set this file to be the path for the pathToConfigModule option.

Inside the typography.js file you created, you define your website’s typography configuration. A basic typography.js configuration looks like this:

If you’re installing Typography.js into an existing Gatsby project you’ve started, you will need to delete all conflicting CSS font styles from your codebase in favor of your new Typography.js settings.

Font sizes of all elements in Typography.js grow and shrink in relation to the baseFontSize defined above. Try playing around with this value and see the visual difference it can make to your website.

To find or create a new typography theme, you can visit Typography.js to see a list of options.

Installing Typography.js themes

Typography.js has built in themes that can save time when defining your website’s font styling. The Funston theme, maintained by Typography.js, is one of the built-in themes. To install the Funston theme from npm, run the command:

To use the theme, edit the typography.js file that you created before and inform Typography.js of the new configuration:

After completing the above steps, you can start the development server using the command gatsby develop and navigate to the local website http://localhost:8000. If all went well you should see the text on your website using the Funston typographic theme.

Note: If your fonts remains unchanged, remove all font-family calls in your CSS and check again.

To find more themes to install, check out the official Typography.js website.