Design series – the header

Yesterday I separated header and footer visually, now let’s have a closer look at the header. This is what it currently looks like:

I see the link to the home page, a checkbox and a burger menu. The link is good to have, the other two elements are not needed at the moment. So let’s get rid of them.

By investigating index.html I see the following code is responsible for the header part:

  <div class="wrapper"><a class="site-title" rel="author" href="/">ms75</a><nav class="site-nav">
        <input type="checkbox" id="nav-trigger" class="nav-trigger" />
        <label for="nav-trigger">
          <span class="menu-icon">
            <svg viewBox="0 0 18 15" width="18px" height="15px">
              <path d="M18,1.484c0,0.82-0.665,1.484-1.484,1.484H1.484C0.665,2.969,0,2.304,0,1.484l0,0C0,0.665,0.665,0,1.484,0 h15.032C17.335,0,18,0.665,18,1.484L18,1.484z M18,7.516C18,8.335,17.335,9,16.516,9H1.484C0.665,9,0,8.335,0,7.516l0,0 c0-0.82,0.665-1.484,1.484-1.484h15.032C17.335,6.031,18,6.696,18,7.516L18,7.516z M18,13.516C18,14.335,17.335,15,16.516,15H1.484 C0.665,15,0,14.335,0,13.516l0,0c0-0.82,0.665-1.483,1.484-1.483h15.032C17.335,12.031,18,12.695,18,13.516L18,13.516z"/>
            </svg>
          </span>
        </label>

        <div class="trigger"></div>
      </nav></div>

Where is this code generated? The home layout (_layouts/home.html) is based on the default layout (_layouts/default.html). The default layout has this line

{%- include header.html -%}

which looks for _include/header.html. Inspecting this file is finally where I find the code quoted above. Because I do not need these elements I delete them completely. Then this is what we are left with:

<header class="site-header" role="banner">

  <div class="wrapper"><a class="site-title" rel="author" href="/">ms75</a>

  </div>
</header>

Now it looks like this:

For a final touch, I style the header with the following code:

:root {
  …
  --norm-size: 1rem;
  --small-size: 0.67rem;
  --big-size: 1.33rem;
  --huge-size: 1.67rem;
}

…

.site-title {
  font-size: var(--huge-size);
  font-weight: bold;
  letter-spacing: -1px;
}

Now it looks like this:

Good enough – tomorrow we have a look at the footer.