Vintage Letterpress Button
<button class="letterpress-btn">Letterpress</button>About Vintage Letterpress Button
Vintage Letterpress Button is a button built with gradient fills, transforms, layered shadows and pseudo elements. Its stylesheet runs to 46 lines across 4 rules, declaring 21 distinct properties. It styles hover and active states explicitly, so the component responds to interaction rather than sitting still. Every format shown on this page is the same component, so you can take HTML and CSS depending on how your project is set up. Nothing is minified and nothing depends on a framework.
When to use
- Sites with a strong established look, where a neutral control would sit awkwardly, where a themed and vintage button fits the surrounding design
- Repeated use across a page, since there is no animation to become tiring when several appear together
- Palettes built around brown, cream and gold, where this button can be dropped in without retheming
- Places where one control is meant to be memorable, since 46 lines of CSS is a real investment for a single element
How it works
The base rule sets the shape with border-radius, height, padding and position. The fill is a gradient rather than a flat colour, so it is a single background declaration with no image to load. A pseudo element carries part of the effect, which keeps the markup to one element while giving the CSS a second surface to animate. Movement is done with transforms rather than by changing position or size, which is what keeps it smooth: transforms are composited and do not force the browser to lay the page out again. State changes are eased with a transition, so hovering does not snap.
Accessibility
Built on a native <button> element, so keyboard focus and screen reader semantics work without extra attributes. No focus style is defined. Add one before shipping, or keyboard users lose track of position. That is one thing to fix before this ships in front of users.
Browser support
Everything this component uses has been supported across browsers for years, so no fallback is needed.
Related components
Frequently asked questions
Vintage Letterpress Button
<button class="letterpress-btn">Letterpress</button>What is inside Vintage Letterpress Button
Vintage Letterpress Button is a CSS button built with gradient fills, transforms, layered shadows, defined in 46 lines across 4 selectors.
Techniques used
CSS properties in this component
backgroundborderborder-radiusbox-shadowcolorcontentcursorfont-familyfont-sizefont-weightheightleftletter-spacingpaddingpositionrighttext-shadowtext-transformtoptransformtransitionAccessibility check1 to fix
- Built on a native <button> element, so keyboard focus and screen reader semantics work without extra attributes.
- No focus style is defined. Add one before shipping, or keyboard users lose track of position.
These notes are generated by reading this component's own source, so they describe what it actually does rather than what a template says. Copy the code above in HTML, CSS and adapt it freely.