Graphic designers and web designers can search far and wide for sources of inspiration. Sometimes that source may be closer than you think. Consider the typeface you use in your project. Start your project by deciding which typeface best suits the message you are trying to convey. Typefaces, like other web design elements, have defining characteristics that give them personalities. If a web design company can be likened to a film production company and the web designer to a film writer and director, typefaces are the actors that tell the story. Maybe your story needs to be serious, maybe it needs to be quirky. Whatever it is, list down the qualities you want your story to convey and find the typefaces that can best communicate these qualities. The best place to start with typeface is with your main body text, since it will occupy the most part of your design. Consider just how much space your body text takes up in your web site and you’ll realise the importance it plays in your overall design. Once you have selected a typeface for your body text, look for that perfect font size that best suits that typeface. Every typeface has a size that it looks just right it. Now move on to your supporting actors – your headings, sub headings and captions that will add character to your story. It is here that you can start thinking about developing a modular scale for your project. Say you decide using 16 pixels for your main body text. The number 16 can now become the basis for all other measurements. It is the first ingredient for developing your modular scale. The second ingredient is the Golden Ratio. According to astrophysicist, Mario Livio: “Some of the greatest mathematical minds of all ages, from Pythagoras and Euclid in ancient Greece, through the medieval Italian mathematician Leonardo of Pisa and the Renaissance astronomer Johannes Kepler, to present-day scientific figures such as Oxford physicist Roger Penrose, have spent endless hours over this simple ratio and its properties. But the fascination with the Golden Ratio is not confined just to mathematicians. Biologists, artists, musicians, historians, architects, psychologists, and even mystics have pondered and debated the basis of its ubiquity and appeal. In fact, it is probably fair to say that the Golden Ratio has inspired thinkers of all disciplines like no other number in the history of mathematics.” What is this magical number found throughout nature and the universe? 1.618. Using your main type size, you can start developing a modular scale multiplying and dividing 16 pixels by the golden number 1.618. Going upwards, you start with 16, 25.89 (16 x 1.618), 41.89 (25.89 x 1.618) and so on. Going downwards, you do the same thing but instead of multiplying, you divide by the golden ratio, which gives you 16, 9.89, 6.11 and so on. You can develop multiple modular scales using other relevant numbers as your starting point, e.g. your caption font size which may be 14 pixels. Add this new set of numbers within your original modular scale and you have more numbers to work with, if you find there are times where you need an in between number and one modular scale is not providing it. Now you have a series of harmonious numbers to work with. But what do you do with these numbers? Apply them to everything you can such as your text width, your line height, your spacing between block of text, and anywhere else you need a number. The point is that instead of using just an arbitrary number, use a number that is harmonious with your overall design.