Animated Books with CSS 3D Transforms

From our monthly sponsor: Create your beautiful portfolio website with Squarespace. Start your free trial.

In this playground we’ll show you some creative, animated books with CSS 3D transforms and transitions.
We’ll show you two types of book designs: hardcover and paperback. Both were made to be easily modifiable in some of their content parts using CSS, images, anchors and some extra little details 🙂

Hardcover Book

The hardcover book consists of three cubes: hardcover front, book spine and hardcover back. Each part uses pseudo-elements to provide some thickness.

Paperback

In contrast to the hardcover, the paperback is a bit simpler. It is made from flat surfaces like the pages and does not include a book spine: paperback front, ruled paper and paperback back

:hover effects

For both books I use the technique of transitioning on “hover on” and “hover off” which is achieved by simply defining the “hover on” transition in the :hover class and the “hover off” transition in the original class declaration of the respective element.

Hover on

When we opened the book, the cover changes from “z-index: 100;” to 0.
The pages have different transition durations, which creates a smooth opening.

.book:hover > .hardcover_front {
	transform: rotateY(-145deg) translateZ(0);
	z-index: 0;
}

.book:hover > .page li:nth-child(1) {
	transform: rotateY(-30deg);
	transition-duration: 1.5s;
}

.book:hover > .page li:nth-child(2) {
	transform: rotateY(-35deg);
	transition-duration: 1.8s;
}

.book:hover > .page li:nth-child(3) {
	transform: rotateY(-118deg);
	transition-duration: 1.6s;
}

.book:hover > .page li:nth-child(4) {
	transform: rotateY(-130deg);
	transition-duration: 1.4s;
}

.book:hover > .page li:nth-child(5) {
	transform: rotateY(-140deg);
	transition-duration: 1.2s;
}

Hover off

When we close the book, we can avoid the overlapping of the pages on the cover by reducing the transition duration of the pages.

.hardcover_front{
	transition: all 0.8s ease, z-index 0.6s;
}

.page > li {
	width: 100%;
	height: 100%;
	transform-origin: left center;
	transition-property: transform;
	transition-timing-function: ease;
}

.page > li:nth-child(1) {
	transition-duration: 0.6s;
}

.page > li:nth-child(2) {
	transition-duration: 0.6s;
}

.page > li:nth-child(3) {
	transition-duration: 0.4s;
}

.page > li:nth-child(4) {
	transition-duration: 0.5s;
}

.page > li:nth-child(5) {
	transition-duration: 0.6s;
}

Cover Design

The cover design is pretty straightforward; I’ve added the class “coverDesign” as an initial configuration and a second class for backgrounds or images.

An alternative of placing an image on the cover is the following:

<img src="" width="100%" height="100%"></img>

To add a little red ribbon to the front cover, simply add:

<span class="ribbon"></span>

And that’s it! I hope it’s useful and inspiring!