Add padding at the beginning and end of each line of text

Solution 1:

I've tested this in IE8 (doesn't look too bad in IE7) and recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari.

Live Demo

Screenshot from Chrome:

It got a bit silly and, to be honest, probably more complicated than it's worth - a JS based solution would definitely be easier to understand.

There are so many gotchas with this technique.

CSS:

#titleContainer {
    width: 520px
}
h3 {
    margin:0;
    font-size: 42px;
    font-weight: bold;
    font-family: sans-serif
}
h3 .heading {
    background-color: #000;
    color: #00a3d0;
}
h3 .subhead {
    background-color: #00a3d0;
    color: #000;
}

div { 
    line-height: 1.1; 
    padding: 1px 0;
    border-left: 30px solid #000; 
    display: inline-block; 
}
h3 { 
    background-color: #000; 
    color: #fff; 
    display: inline; 
    margin: 0; 
    padding: 0
} 
h3 .indent { 
    position: relative; 
    left: -15px;
}
h3 .subhead {
    padding: 0 15px;
    float: left;
    margin: 3px 0 0 -29px;
    outline: 1px solid #00a3d0;
    line-height: 1.15
}

HTML:

<div id="titleContainer">
    <h3><span class="indent">

        <span class="heading">THE NEXT GENERATION OF CREATIVE TALENT</span><br /><span class="subhead">IT'S RIGHT HERE</span>

    </span></h3>
</div>

<!--[if IE]><style>
h3 .subhead {
    margin-left: -14px
}
</style><![endif]-->

Solution 2:

box-shadow makes it easy!

box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;
-moz-box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;
-webkit-box-shadow:0.5em 0 0 #000,-0.5em 0 0 #000;