How to Make Circular/Curved Text with JavaScript

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Creating circular text, or text on an curved path, in webpages may seem like somewhat of a intimidating task. There isn’t really a straightforward way to achieve it with standard HTML and CSS. There is a JavaScript plugin or two out there with some pretty decent results, but using plugins means extra dependency and load time associated tacked on to your project. So… what can you do? With a little bit of plain old vanilla JavaScript and standard CSS, it’s actually not that difficult to create curved text of your own! In this article, I’ll show you how to create circular/curved text that relies on as little as 15 lines of JavaScript. The result is functional and reusable so that you can apply as much circular text to your projects as you would like! You won’t need any special libraries or plugins of any sort; just good old fashioned HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. I’ll provide examples as we go, and I’ll provide items for consideration along the way. Circle the wagons; let’s get started!

Circular Text: The HTML

We’ll start by setting up the HTML, which is pretty much as simple as it gets. You’ll want a container for the circular text (although not 100% necessary) as well as a target element in which you’ll insert your circular text. Here’s how I’ve got it set up:

See the Pen ALoKJJ by Develop Intelligence (@DevelopIntelligenceBoulder) on CodePen.

Circular Text: The CSS

Next we’ll add a some CSS to get things set up. None of the following CSS is actually necessary, and it can be adjusted as needed. For the purposes of this tutorial, I chose a purely arbitrary blackish background with whitish text; I also chose to center the target element (the div with class=circTxt), but you can choose to position the containers and target elements however you please! Here’s how I have the CSS:

See the Pen NRvNEv by Develop Intelligence (@DevelopIntelligenceBoulder) on CodePen.

Circular Text: The JavaScript

Next comes the magic, the JavaScript. Things get a bit more complex here, but the overall logic isn’t really all that difficult. To give a broad overview before actually looking at the code, here’s what we’ll want to accomplish:

  1. Create a reusable function named circularText that takes 3 arguments: 1) the text to be written in circular fashion, 2) the radius of the circle on which the text will lie, and 3) the DOM index of the target class=circTxt element
  2. Split the text in to an array and get it’s length (i.e., the number of characters it contains)
  3. Divide the total degrees in a circle (i.e., 360 deg) by the length/number of characters in the text to determine spacing
  4. Specify the origin, or starting point, for the circular text (for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to hardcode 0 degrees)
  5. Create a loop (here using Array’s forEach method) that inserts the text around the perimeter of a circle using the defined radius and updating the origin/start value as it goes
  6. Call the function to create the circular/arced text!

Got all that? Believe me, it’s really not that complicated; less than 15 lines if you please. Here’s what the code looks like:

See the Pen rrzZoK by Develop Intelligence (@DevelopIntelligenceBoulder) on CodePen.

NOTE: I am do use ES6 syntax there (the arrow function and the template literal), but the code can easily be refactored to comply with more traditional syntax.

Well… there you have it… circular text with plain old HTML, CSS, and JavaScript!

Some things to consider are the need for adjusting the passed radius value based on how many characters are in your text. Generally speaking, the more characters you have in your text, the larger the radius you’ll need to use (however, you can create some neat effects by using a radius that might initially appear to be too small). Also note that you can created arced or curved text without going around a full circle by being purposeful about using spaces in your text.

See the Pen kkobjp by Develop Intelligence (@DevelopIntelligenceBoulder) on CodePen.

The arc effect can also be achieved by modifying the origin value used in the code (i,e., starting somewhere other than at the top of the circle). Regarding modifications to the CSS, the code could be changed to target elements with specified ids or tag names; you could use the document object’s querySelector method to achieve precision targeting as well. Additionally, you can modify both the circTxt containers (positioning them wherever you like on the page, giving them height and width, etc.) and the circular text within.

See the Pen Circular Text Generator by Chase Allen (@ccallen001) on CodePen.

I encourage you to go wild, get creative with it, circle back and have some fun! :)

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