

The secret law of page harmony - hackermom
http://retinart.net/graphic-design/secret-law-of-page-harmony/

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erikpukinskis
I've come across this before... Am I the only one who finds it awkward? It's
unsettling to me... all the whitespace at the bottom of the page.... it feels
like gravity is sucking the two text boxes up and into the crease.

And maybe part of it is that I've read thousands of books in my life, and I
don't think I've EVER read one with this layout.

And this guy going on and on about the golden ratio and all this pointless
geometric coincidences. It's like some weird fetish.

Now don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate the need for harmony in graphic
design, and the importance of geometric relationships. I just think that some
relationships are actually felt by the reader, and others are utterly
invisible, un-feelable ones that people like this jerk off to.

[cringe]. I need to go look at something beautiful to get the taste of that
out of my mouth.

Edit: I also think the golden ratio is bullshit, but that's another story...

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Montagist
Wow...you....sound like such a graphic design hater. haha

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erikpukinskis
I love good graphic design. I've actually never met an actual graphic designer
who bought this shit. There are much more advanced theories of design harmony.
This kind of stuff always seems to come from graphic design enthusiasts, not
professionals.

It's like the CutCo of design theory. You're like "WHOA IT CAN CUT A TIN CAN
IT MUST BE AWESOME" but pro chefs don't cut cans or use CutCo knives.

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Groxx
Excellently clear breakdown. Quite a nice read, and even a good skim (you can
pick up nearly everything just by looking at the pictures and reading the
intro paragraphs).

I think it really only applies to books which seek to be decorative objects as
well as literature, however. The wide outside margin allows for side notes or
decorative borders, and the bottom is similar to how pictures are matted for
display in galleries - "heavier" bottoms have a subtle but important impact.
It also creates room for detached footnotes or larger decorations. The thinner
inside margins help keep text on a readable level due to the book binding
techniques (remember, books were typically thicker when scribes did the work).

But without that decoration, I'm pretty sure the small blocks of black text
would act as an optical illusion, making them appear smaller than they are.
Without things filling those areas, I'd think it would make the book look
empty, overly white-filled, rather than balanced.

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glenjamin
The article seems to talk a lot about how to reproduce the guides, and how
great they are.

It doesn't provide any context as to _why_ these are supposedly such great
guidelines to follow.

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GiraffeNecktie
He does, but you have to read between the lines (so to speak). In graphic
design, objects feel anchored when they have some strong relationship to the
other objects on the page or to the placement on a series of pages. You could
plop everything dead center and be done with it, but most designers would say
that that's terrifically static and dull. Usually designers like to work with
a grid pattern. But here he's also working the corner angles, to get a further
relationship to the page elements that helps to anchor the content (in a
subtle way) without being static and without looking arbitrary. Ultimately,
the only thing that's important is that it's just a very pleasing structure.

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JoshCole
I'm starting to love the typography of Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of
Quantitative Information." I'm loving it because unlike a lot of other texts
I've read its margins provide room for very detailed notes. In a normal book
if I wanted to sketch out an amazing proof, I wouldn't have the space, but his
book has room for that and more.

You know what would suck? If people didn't have any idea that choosing one
page design over another actually changed how there product would be used. Not
that long ago there was an interview with Joel Spolsky on here where he
pointed out that small differences could really change a community. This is
just as true in books as it is in an internet application.

So there is no perfect page. There is no secret law. Your better off doing A/B
testing than treating anything but the gospel as gospel.

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zyfo
What would the equivalent perfect text-centric (articles/blog posts) web
layout look like?

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lamnk
I don't claim OP's design is perfect, but it's one of the very few sites that
don't make me want to click on readability bookmarklet.

