Sassy Modular Scale is a Sass based mixin that calculates the incremental values of the modular scale in proportion to a set size and ratio. It was inspired by and adapted from Tim Brown's modularscale.com.

Sassy Modular Scale can be used as a Compass extension and can be installed as a Ruby gem.

gem install modular-scale

Add require 'modular-scale' to your Compass config file.

Import the file into your stylesheets: @import 'modular-scale';

Modular-scale is used as a function. Simply pass it through in place of any value to generate a value based on a modular scale.

width: modular-scale(2); // two up the modular scale
width: ms(2); // Shorthand for the line above
width: modular-scale(2, 1em); // two up the modular scale with a base size of 1em
width: modular-scale(2, 1em, octave() ); // Same as above but on an octave scale

You can output a list to your terminal to help you find out what values are on your scale.

@include modular-scale-list($start, $end, $base-size, $ratio);

By default, it writes 0-20 on the scale. You can also use shorthand to make things more efficient.

@include ms-list; // shorthand without attributes
@include ms-list($start, $end, $base-size, $ratio); // shorthand with attributes

You can also write the output to your CSS file if you are using the terminal:

@include ms-list-output($start, $end, $base-size, $ratio);

As a side effect of the modular-scale functions a power function is also available.

@include power($base, $power);

Sassy Modular Scale can be used as a function, like so:

// Use as a function. Fill in the multiple, base-size, and ratio
height: modular-scale(7, 16px, golden() );

You can also 'lace' multiple ratios together by passing them in as a list (space-separated)

.lace {
  width: ms(7, 16px, golden() fourth() );
}

You can also set the $base-size variable to a list to interrelate two significant known sizes in your design note: the starting point of the scale will always be the lowest value in this list

.multibases {
  width: ms(7, 16px 300px, golden() );
}

You can use multiple $base-sizes and multiple $ratios together

.multibase-multiratio {
  width: ms(7, 16px 300px, golden() fourth() );
}

Modular scale includes functions for a number of classic design and musical scale ratios. You can add your own ratios as well.

By default, the variable $ratio is set to golden().

Add your own ratio in Sass by setting a variable and passing that to modular-scale.

$my-variable: 1 / 3.14159265;
$ratio: $my-variable;

Sassy Modular Scale was adapted from modularscale.com by Tim Brown (@nicewebtype). Tim also wrote a supporting article at A List Apart titled "More Meaningful Typography". Additional inspiration goes to Robert Bringhurst, author of "The Elements of Typographic Style" - specifically Chapter 8 titled "Shaping the Page"

Copyright (c) 2011 Scott Kellum (@scottkellum), Adam Stacoviak (@adamstac) and Mason Wendell (@codingdesigner)

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