Proportion and Balance

One of the fundamental problems that designers have is ensuring that a design is pleasing to the eye or the aesthetics are correct, what skills do they require to do this?

There are a number of ways.

The first and, I believe most common is by using your eye with trial and effort to determine the most successful and pleasing design for the designers eye.

Of course the more education that the designer has in proportion and balance determined by what has worked over the centuries, the more the designer is at an advantage over others.

So who says that systems and popular design methods are correct? Democracy and popularity addresses this and while swimming against the tide (or trying to do something different) is a great way to see how strong you are, for the designer using what is known to work is why we have design education in the first place.

The very interesting thing is that often proportion is set to a particular mathematical formulae. Very much like music when you hear an incorrect note you instinctively know, and it will have gone against the traditional and tried formulae.

The same can be said for design and while some musicians play by ear the majority even if they have the natural gift still have some formal training to back up the composition. And so it’s the same for the designer. While we think that we have a natural talent this is best developed using professional training and methods.

On the following pages, design methods and formulae are demonstrated with links back to other sites that may have a different perspective.

The Golden Mean. A system of rectangles that were developed formally in Greece but may have been used back as far as early Egyptian times for the construction of the pyramids.

The Fibonacci Series. A useful series of numbers used for determining proportion.