Watch: isometric lettering speedrun

Hover effects on isometric blocks work best when they follow the same rules as the static scene. Lift a block along its vertical axis, deepen its shadow on the floor, and leave the other blocks alone. Moving a block sideways, or changing its angle, breaks the projection and makes the scene feel unstable.

Scaling for small screens

Typography on a tilted plane is readable only in small doses. A single word on the side of a block looks great; a paragraph set at an angle is exhausting. Keep running text flat and upright, and save the skewed type for labels, numbers and the occasional headline where the shape of the word matters more than speed.

Before we publish any illustration we run it through a short review. Is the light direction consistent? Does every block sit on the grid? Is the art hidden from screen readers where it is decorative? Does it survive forced colours mode? It takes five minutes and catches most of the problems we used to fix after launch.

SVG is often the better choice for complex scenes. CSS cubes are fun to build and easy to animate, but a city block made of hundreds of divs is hard to change and heavy to render. We draw the static parts in SVG, keep the interactive blocks in CSS, and layer the two together.

Tokens that survive a redesign

Colour contrast still applies to illustrations that carry meaning. A bar chart drawn as blocks needs enough contrast between the bars and the floor, and labels on the faces need the same contrast as body text. Decorative scenes have more freedom, but we still avoid pale blocks on a pale background.