Screen Sizes with Golden Proportion

[zaphodeist]

Neat idea Phil The ruler could also be kept in the Designs/ClipArt gallery.

[amoore]

Neat idea, Phil. Thanks!

Allison

[Anders 205]

The ratios of successive Fibonacci numbers approaches the golden ratio Ø as n approaches infinity, as first proved by Scottish mathematician Robert Simson in 1753.

Pascal's triangle is a number triangle with numbers arranged in staggered rows. The triangle was studied by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), although it had been described centuries earlier by Chinese mathematician Yanghui (about 500 years earlier, in fact) and the Persian astronomer-poet Omar Khayyám. It is therefore known as the Yanghui triangle in China.

The "shallow diagonals" of Pascal's triangle sum to Fibonacci numbers, i.e,.

1 = 1
1 = 1
2 = 1 + 1
3 = 2 + 1
5 = 1 + 3 + 1
8 = 3 + 4 + 1
13 = 1 + 6 + 5 + 1

Cheers, Anders

[Anders 205]

Preparing your art work composition it is practical to use Golden Section templates, to make you get the feeling of golden proportions. I share my Golden Rectangle and Golden Triangle (pyramidology) templates with you. I have used them during several years and find them very simple and precise to use. In the .xar file, attached, you can save the Golden Section units to .eps in a new GoldenSection folder and insert it into your Clipart gallery.

When creating new art work, open the Clipart gallery, select the GoldenSection folder and just drag the Golden Rectangle or the Golden Triangle into your drawing board on top of your new composition. Resize the geometrical figures proportionally to fit your composition, flip them horizontonally or vertically, duplicate them, change line width and line color to what calls for when composing and taking advantage of the golden proportions in your art work.

Enjoy composing beauty and balanced harmony with golden proportions, when you feel like! Note: This is only tools though, and not a rule, for composition.

Cheers, Anders

PS. For those of you who may have an interest in more consecutive Fibonacci numbers. The first 30 Fibonacci numbers are:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987, 1597, 2584, 4181, 6765, 10946, 17711, 28657, 46368, 75025, 121393, 196418, 317811, 514229. The ratios of successive pairs of Fibonacci numbers approaches the golden ratio Phi, Ø = 1.618..., as n approaches infinity. The larger number, the greater golden ratio certainty.

[amoore]

Very interesting, Anders. I just applied your shapes to an image I've been setting up to represent my company's product line. Of the eleven figures, all but three touched one of the shape lines, usually in a significant way. For the three that didn't, two had text labels that did. When I adjusted the remaining text label and the title text to meet the lines, it did seem to improve the image just that much more.

I'll keep an eye out for more opportunities.

[Anders 205]

Allison, I'm honored and pleased to read and view that you took the trouble to test the templates in one of your graphic productions. Most of the objects lined up, you say.

With your many years of experience of professional graphic production, I trust that you have by intuition been able to build your sensitivity for beauty and balance in harmony. Not at least by the fact that you move around in the midst of the red-hot Big Apple mainstream for visual communication.

There can always appear a reason to check your graphics for balance against the consumers' vibes. On the other hand the real question isn't where ideas come from. It's where they go and how they get there. As you are very well aware of.

Thank you very much, Allison, for your feedback.

Cheers, Anders

[amoore]

You're very welcome, Anders, and thanks for posting your shapes. However, I have to demur when it comes to taking credit for creating the image.

I don't have the graphics background many Xarans have, and I would never have been able to come up with this image from scratch. Plus, I don't have the luxury of time in accomplishing these projects. However, I'm very good at finding the pieces in clipart and assembling or modifying them to achieve what I need. In this case, I used two images licensed from istock, worked out linked colors for the figures I didn't have, added the labels, and sorted out the final size for use in our demo disks. Thanks to Egg's discovery several years ago about using swf files to import vector images into flash apps, I've been able to take the whole thing into SWiSHmax3 and add fades and zooms to individual components.

When I get another break, I want to put your golden section shapes over the original base image and see how much difference the text labels made in matching components to your lines.

[Anders 205]

Your modesty is becoming, Allison. But surely you have the experienced ability separating communicating art from lesser communicating art. You live and work in one of the most media intensive areas in the world with Madison Ave close, certainly with absorbing and progressive influence from graphics, more than you are prepared to admit.

I am looking forward to hear more about how the golden section shapes can serve you in your art work drills.

Cheers, Anders

[Albacore]

Sorry to be so late with this! Have a look at this video from the layers mag: http://www.layersmagazine.com/illust...ensection.html

Maybe not so easy in Xara but should be easily done.

[amoore]

Yes, it takes a little more work because you have to create and break ellipses to get the arcs. As you say, not hard.

I still have to adjust the first ellipse, as I went slightly off alignment at the top. I also found that snapping to the grid sometimes produced ellipses that weren't quite the right size, so I had to manually adjust their diameters.