I have been reading about proportion in the page. I came across the above poster by Antonio Carusone on AisleOne which perfectly illustrates the Rule of Thirds, a compositional rule in visual art and design. The rule divides an image into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. Important compositional elements are placed along these lines or their intersections to create more tension, energy and interest in the composition than if these elements were simply centered. I measured my A1 Design and Rhetoric posters and found that the poster is almost divided into thirds by the square. The title line actually sits on the line dividing the bottom third of the poster.
The Golden Section, sometimes called 'divine proportion' is the relationship that occurs between two numbers when the ration of the smaller to the larger is the sum of the two. The formula expressing this relationship is a:b=b:(a+b). The aspect ratio described by a Golden Section is 1:1.618. I decided that, as an exercise, it might be interesting to re-work my Design and Rhetoric poster using the Golden Section.
Compared to the A1 version the proportions are somewhat elongated and the square no longer feels like the dominant element. I prefer the A1 version but it's interesting to look at the same information reformatted to fit The Golden Section. It's also interesting to examine some of the geometry that underpins some of my more intuitive design decisions where compositions are created based on feelings rather than logical thought.
In Designing Books: Practice and Theory, Jost Hochuli and Robin Kinross talk about some other proportions of the book:
"Certain numerical proportions work better than those that are arbitarily chosen. The following proportions of width to height have proved themselves:
The Fibonacci-series proportions: 1:2, 2:3 (the proportions of Designing Books: Practice and Theory, 170 x 255mm), 3:5, 5:8 (a rational approximation to the Golden Section); the rational proportions 3:4 (for large-size books) and 5:9; the irrational proportions 1:√2 (1:1.414), 1:√3 (1:1.732), the rectangle derived from the pentagon (1:1.538), and the Golden Section (1:1.618), which almost has the rational proportions of the Fibonacci series."
Personally, I am a fan of ISO A series of paper sizes. I find the proportion of these paper sizes satisfying to look at and to work with, the height-to-width ratio of all pages is the square root of two (1.4142:1). I'm also interested in an economy of means, using office technologies such as photocopying and spiral binding to make outputs - and A paper sizes are widely available.