README.md

React typography system

This is a collection of tools and conventions I've used to create a typography system in React. It uses styled-components and styled-system to allow you to import styled typeography elements and override both the styling and markup like so:

<Canon tag="p" color="red">
  Canon
</Canon>

I've this approach to re-create GEL, the excellent CSS based typography system by the BBC. Examples of this are on CodeSandbox and the full process is documented on Medium.

Quick overview

The DynamicComponent is what enables you to override the styling and markup

import React from "react";
import styled from "styled-components";
import tag from "clean-tag";
import {
  space,
  lineHeight,
  fontSize,
  fontStyle,
  size,
  color,
  colorStyle,
  textStyle,
  fontFamily,
  fontWeight,
  letterSpacing,
  borderRadius
} from "styled-system";

const StyledDynamicComponent = styled(tag)`
  ${space}
  ${fontSize}
  ${fontStyle}
  ${color}
  ${size}
  ${colorStyle}
  ${textStyle}
  ${lineHeight}
  ${letterSpacing}
  ${fontFamily}
  ${fontWeight}
  ${borderRadius}
`;

const DynamicComponent = ({ tag = "div", children, ...props }) => {
  const WithComponent = StyledDynamicComponent.withComponent(tag);
  return <WithComponent {...props}>{children}</WithComponent>;
};

DynamicComponent.defaultProps = {
  tag: "div"
};

export default DynamicComponent;

./DynamicComponent/index.js

Each of the Typography styles use the higher orer DynamicComponent to enable style and markup overrides. The default styles get spread in from the theme.js file which is also passed into the ThemeProvider.

export const Canon = props => (
  <DynamicComponent {...canon} {...props}>
    {props.children}
  </DynamicComponent>
);

./Typography/index.js