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Bauhaus inspired design with z-index and SVGs

Introduction

I’ve loved Bauhaus Design for many years and always jump at the chance to try out converting a layout to web design.

It was while I was thinking about recreating this design that I wrote the convert all glyphs of a font to individual SVG files article. This allowed me to easily grab the character glyphs that I needed.

Multi layering with z-index

A large part of the appeal is the layered effect of having the central image partially obscured by SVG glyphs. This is achieved with the z-index property. Add in a dash of box-shadow around the image and filter: drop-shadow() on the SVGs and we get the desired effect.

The Design

Dave at Ashton Court

Stuff I need to learn / get better at

The viewBox settings for the SVGs are not quite right and need tweaking to get the fit “just right.” There is currently too much space surrounding each glyph, and… the ‘A’ & ‘V’ characters need to be adjusted to the same width (or thereabouts) as the other characters.

If you have any advice (or constructive feedback) about SVG manipulation and how I could improve upon this from a technical standpoint, please let me know.

Download sample code

I’ve assembled all the parts so that you can play with them. The standard – software is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind – applies here.

Zip File Info
/images/svg/a-65.svg
175B
/images/svg/b-66.svg
328B
/images/svg/d-68.svg
283B
/images/dave-ashton-court.webp
140.9kB
/images/svg/e-69.svg
157B
/index.html
3.3kB
/images/svg/r-82.svg
223B
/readme.txt
460B
/style.css
2.2kB
/images/svg/v-86.svg
154B
File: barrd-bauhaus-z-index.zip
Details: 10 files @ 152kB

That’s all folks

I intend to carry on working with this project but for the purpose of this exercise I’ll leave it at this basic version.

// End of Project

More Information

Dave A.K.A. 'barrd'

Dave is a Bristol based Scottish Expat who has 20+ years experience of web development. Loves playing guitar, reading books, watching Sci-Fi and tinkering with tech.

About Dave A.K.A. 'barrd'

Image for Dave A.K.A. 'barrd'
Dave is a Bristol based Scottish Expat who has 20+ years experience of web development. Loves playing guitar, reading books, watching Sci-Fi and tinkering with tech.

Read more about Dave