Custom Fonts in Tailwind CSS: A Step-by-Step Guide

Customizing Fonts in Tailwind CSS: A Comprehensive Guide

When it comes to building frontend projects, having the right fonts can make all the difference. Whether you’re working with UI designs or creating your own, custom fonts are often a crucial aspect of the project. But how do you integrate them with Tailwind CSS?

The Power of Web Fonts

Web fonts are specifically designed for use on web pages. They’re downloaded by the browser while rendering a page and applied to the text. You can host your own web fonts on your server or use external providers like Google Fonts. In this article, we’ll work with the popular Poppins font, a geometric sans serif typeface.

Adding Custom Fonts to Tailwind CSS

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that allows you to build custom designs without writing CSS code. However, it doesn’t have built-in support for web fonts. Don’t worry, adding custom fonts is easier than you think!

Creating New Font Families in Tailwind

To create a new font family in Tailwind, you’ll need to extend the Tailwind configuration. This involves defining your custom font families within the fontFamily key in the tailwind.config.js file. You can specify multiple fallback font families in case the primary one isn’t available.

Integrating Google Fonts with Tailwind CSS

There are three ways to use Google Fonts in Tailwind CSS:

1. Using the CDN link: Add the CDN link to your index.html file or _document.js file, and then update the tailwind.config.js file to extend the font family.
2. Using the @import rule: Import the Google Fonts CSS file into your Tailwind CSS file using the @import rule.
3. Downloading the font files: Download the font files from Google Fonts and add them to your project’s public/fonts folder. Then, update the global.css file and tailwind.config.js file to use the font.

Building with Locally Installed Fonts

Using locally installed fonts can be a great option. Simply download the font files, add them to your project’s public/fonts folder, and update the global.css file and tailwind.config.js file to use the font.

Changing the Default Font in Tailwind CSS

Tailwind allows you to extend the default configuration by adding your own classes or changing the properties of the default configuration. You can update the tailwind.config.js file to change the default font and add custom font sizes.

Removing Default Tailwind Fonts

To improve performance, you can remove default Tailwind fonts by updating the tailwind.config.js file. Tailwind also has a purge feature that allows you to discard all unused CSS in production.

Dynamic Font Sizing with Tailwind

Dynamic font sizing allows you to change the size of your UI elements based on the screen size. Tailwind provides responsive text classes that allow you to set different font sizes based on the screen size.

Conclusion

In this article, we explored how to use custom fonts in Tailwind CSS. We worked with both web fonts and locally installed fonts, and learned how to extend Tailwind’s default configuration. With these techniques, you’ll be able to customize your fonts and take your frontend projects to the next level.