Troubleshooting: SVG Text Won’t Scale

In today’s post, I’d like to share my recent experience with an animated SVG text transformation using CSS. I encountered some frustrating issues when trying to use the scale() transform on SVG text elements, particularly with CSS animations. The scaling transformation wasn’t having any effect, regardless of whether I applied it directly in the style sheet or inline within the SVG element itself.

To set the stage, I was working on animating the text label “Full Stack Developer” in an SVG element. My goal was to animate this text by initially scaling and translating it and finally setting it to its original scale and position. Here’s a brief rundown of what I was trying to achieve and how I finally fixed the issue.

Understanding the Problem

Initially, my CSS looked something like this:

.profession_title {
    font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif;
    font-size: 11px;
    font-weight: 600;
    fill: hsl(var(--gray-300), 1);
    transform: translateY(30px);
    opacity: 0;
    /*transform: scale(.6, 1.4);*/
    transform-origin: center;
    animation: workTitleAnimationSequence 300ms ease-in forwards;
    animation-delay: 2.5s;
}

And the animation keyframes were as follows:

@keyframes workTitleAnimationSequence {
    from { opacity: 0; transform: translateY(30px); }
    to { opacity: 1; transform: translateY(0); }
}

When I commented in the ‘transform: scale(.6, 1.4);’, it had no visible effect on the SVG text element. Surprisingly, adding this property directly in the SVG as <text transform="scale(.6, 1.4)"> didn’t work either, which was unexpected.

Potential Conflicts in CSS

The primary reason for the scale() not working was due to a conflict in the use of the transform property. The transform property in the original CSS declaration was being overshadowed by the subsequent animation keyframes which only manipulated the translateY property. It’s important to remember that specifying a transform in a keyframe essentially resets any transformations defined outside the animation. This means if you define a scale transformation and a translate transformation in different parts of your styles, one will override the other wherever the scope overlaps.

Solution: Integrating Transformations

To resolve this issue, all transformations need to be consolidated within the keyframe animations, ensuring that all desired transformations (scaling, translating, etc.) are defined together within each keyframe state. Here’s how you can modify your keyframes:

@keyframes workTitleAnimationSequence {
    0% {
        opacity: 0;
        transform: translate(30px) scale(.6, 1.4);
    }
    96% {
        transform: scale(.6, 1.4);
    }
    100% {
        opacity: 1;
        transform: translate(0) scale(1, 1);
    }
}

In this revised version, each state of the animation clearly defines both the scale and translate transformations. This way, there are no conflicts or overrides happening that could potentially nullify the scaling effect.

Conclusion

In conclusion, when using CSS animations with transformations on SVG elements, it’s essential to consolidate all transformations within the animation keyframes. This ensures that all transformations are applied as expected without unexpectedly overriding each other. By doing so, not only did the scale() function as intended, but the entire animation sequence played smoothly, enhancing the visual appeal of the text element I was working on. I hope this breakdown helps you understand how transformations and animations interact in CSS and aids you in your future projects!