Golden Section

In class yesterday we talked about the golden section. It could add the ahhhhh! to your layouts and once you master it people will look at your work and think you are a rocket scientist in design. It is also fascinating and mysterious as phi is a powerful aesthetic tool that can evoke great emotion in your audience.

I found a link that shows how to golden section a square if this is the format you select.
http://textism.com/bucket/fibsquare.html

More than likely it will be a rectangle and this will be much easier to follow. This short video explains the procedure.Once you have created golden section grid lines you can use the intersections of those lines to position images and text on your mood board. It really is amazing how applying the golden section to your page design pushes it to a higher visual aesthetic. At private design schools like Academy of Art San Francisco there is an entire course devoted to the golden section.

If you want to learn more check out these links:
http://milan.milanovic.org/math/english/golden/golden1.html
http://milan.milanovic.org/math/english/golden/golden5.html
http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibInArt.html
http://powerretouche.com/Divine_proportion_tutorial.htm

One of my favorite books on the subject is called the Geometry of Design: Studies in proportion and composition by Kimberly Elam. It is inexpensive and has many great examples with tracing tissue overlays showing golden sections. BUY THIS BOOK!

What do the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and the sun pyramid of Teotihuacan have in common? What secret did great world thinkers, artists and composers like Plato, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven and Bach embrace?

I created this short video featuring Sean Bacon who completed the portfolio class at SD City College in 2008 and does a masterful job of explaining the golden section. The results are amazing and you will be hooked on the power of the design tool. The relationship between mathematical thinking and design is fascinating.

"The power of the golden section to create harmony arises from its unique capacity to unite different parts of a whole so that each preserves its own identity, and yet blends into the greater pattern of a single whole". Gyorgy Doczi, The Power of Limits 1994