Proportions in Design

As with any creative field, web design is sometimes approached with a sporadic and random brush; approximating the aspects of a page’s elements needed to create a certain look and feel doesn’t always work very well, yet some web designers choose to apply this unpredictable approach, sometimes ending up with satisfactory or even exemplary results. For the most part, however, some sort of technique or planning is needed in order to secure web pages that meet the specifications for a project and also bring out a particular beauty of aesthetic quality. Towards this end, the issue of proportions in design is one of the most important factors that can go into the creation of a visually pleasing and easily usable page.
Just as specialized keyword tools are imperative for a meaningful implementation of search engine optimization, so are proportions in design essential components of creating great web pages. An SEO expert haphazardly picking and choosing keywords based on how they’re feeling about the words themselves may hit the jackpot once in a while, but with the availability of precision tools, this approach rarely if ever makes sense. Likewise, web designers can take advantage of many thousands of years of human interest in and study of proportions in design to make their visual products more appealing.
Some of the earliest instances of human interest in proportions can be found in preserved papyri from ancient Egypt, which contain mathematical tools for creating correct design pieces. The ancient Greeks, who incorporated proportions heavily into their art and architecture, are perhaps best known for their three orders –doric, ionic, and corinthian–, which have served as the basis for building design in cultures around the world. Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man describes the proportions of the human figure, and has been an essential tool in artistic representations of people ever since.
In the modern era, we have on-screen tools and calculations able to help us arrive at precise proportions as dictated by any number of artistic authorities. But web designers from Austin Texas to Tacoma Washington and Portland Maine can follow basic ideas about proportion in web design while still employing their own creative streak to their work. An important consideration in design proportions is and understanding of those elements the designer wants to emphasize. As readers tend to view pages in an “F” shape, placing important items along these horizontal and vertical lines, while allowing the remaining space to serve as a visual support, can often create the most effective look and feel for a site. To this end, columns are a hot topic in design proportions; an adherence to uniformity among column widths as well as an attention to the proportions of Fibbonacci’s Golden Spiral can help designers achieve subtly attractive pages.
Whether designing for a small movie theatre in Austin TX or creating a full site for an up and coming New York investment firm, paying close attention to proportions in design will result in beautiful, usable, and timeless pages no matter the content or depth of the site.
NuArtisan
7000 N Mo Pac Expy Ste 200
Austin, TX 78731
(512) 712-5359

