

Apple’s iCloud Icon Uses The Golden Ratio - p0ppe
http://stam-design-stam.blogspot.com/2011/06/icloud.html

======
smarterchild
Apple's design reputation is so established at this point that, if they hadn't
used the Golden Ratio, I suspect there would be articles titled "Why does
Apple's iCloud Icon deliberately ignore the Golden Ratio?"

------
jarek-foksa
As far as I know there is no scientific evidence which would prove that people
prefer artworks that are aligned to golden ratio proportions. In other words -
golden ratio is pure pseudoscience when used in context of design:
<http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/fibonacc.htm>

~~~
robenkleene
I found the side-by-side comparison of the two images of the Parthenon one of
the best arguments _for_ the golden ratio I've ever seen.

The part followed by:

> One of these has been stretched vertically 20%, or reduced vertically 20%.
> Which one do you find most pleasing? Most dramatic? Most like the real
> thing?

The one on the left is more pleasing to me. The one on the right looks garish.
The one on the right is the stretched one right? In fact they both look
distorted to me, I believe the images also are being scaled to irregular
proportions by the HTML. A direct link to the source image of the one on the
left looks correct to me: <http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/nashv.jpg> But
I'm no expert and maybe I'm making a fool of myself.

But going back to the author's intention, I read the sentence I quoted several
times, and I still don't know what his preference is. The fact that he said
"most dramatic" makes me think he prefer the one on the right?

With respect to using the golden ratio in design. I am a designer. I've never
used the golden ratio, but I understand the desire to. As design is discipline
with very few rules, we latch onto anything concrete, whether the benefits are
real or imaginary. Otherwise it just feels like shooting in the dark. While
I'm agnostic on whether the golden ratio is actually objectively attractive or
not, the benefits of using a framework like this I find to be invaluable.

Here is what I mean: lets say you use the golden ratio to layout out a blog,
i.e., place the logo, main content, sidebar, etc... Then you use the golden
ratio again to layout an individual blog post, i.e., the header, the text of
the post, maybe a pull quote, and some inline images. Now you've done
something I can attest to the benefits of, because you've created a harmonious
repetition of proportion through-out the design. When I look back at my own
design work, the strongest dividing line between the work I am proud of and
the work I am no longer proud of, is just this. When I started using a
concrete system to repeat proportion through out the design, to my admittedly
subjective eye, the quality of my design work greatly increased.

------
nextparadigms
It may use the golden ration, but I don't find the iCloud logo that nice or
that memorable.

------
joakin
The interesting stuff its the images, unless you know japanese of course.

Here is the google translate:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=es&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fstam-
design-stam.blogspot.com%2F2011%2F06%2Ficloud.html)

------
dermatthias
Nice find, but for me that's just basic design principles applied to an icon
design. The golden ratio isn't really something that's new or anything...

------
smackfu
What's the ratio between the two 1.6 circles?

~~~
pointillistic
Yes this is the question, are the two larger circles also in the golden
section proportion? I assume they are.

Also interesting is the position of the circles inside boundary of the (golden
section) rectangle.

~~~
andrew1
If the two larger circles had that ratio then it would imply that the two
circles in the bottom left and bottom right would have the same radius. Which
they don't appear to. So the ratio between the two larger circles must be
slightly smaller, 1.5ish maybe.

~~~
pointillistic
Yes, you are correct. This seems to be the flaw in the design then , i.e. no
organic relationship between the two clusters except the arbitrary golden
section boundary.

------
tripzilch
I just happened to wonder yesterday whether there actually was any scientific
data on whether the golden ratio is actually significantly more pleasing than
other ratios.

Turns out there isn't much data, and of what there is, it doesn't always point
at a significant preference for certain ratios. And even where it does, and
then where it actually points near the golden ratio, it's inconclusive whether
people prefer 1.5, 1.618 or 1.666.

But yeah they do turn up in nature over and over again.

The "aesthetically pleasing" bit is just something that's been repeated for
centuries, swallowed without thinking.

So if there actually _were_ a preference, that sounds like a good explanation.
Doesn't really mean it works the other way around, though.

also see:
[http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue22/features/golden/ind...](http://plus.maths.org/content/os/issue22/features/golden/index)

------
cpeterso
Artists Komar and Melamid demonstrated the how artistic preferences vary
around the world with a 1995 project called "Most Wanted and Least Wanted
Paintings".

Komar and Melamid's paintings _"reflect the artists' interpretation of a
professional market research survey about aesthetic preferences and taste in
painting. Intending to discover what a true "people's art" would look like,
the artists ... expanded their market research to more than a dozen countries
around the globe and in turn, created Most Wanted and Least Wanted paintings
for each country."_

Curiously, Holland's most and least wanted preferences are nearly the reverse
of the other countries!

* Survey results: <http://awp.diaart.org/km/>

* The resulting paintings: <http://awp.diaart.org/km/painting.html>

------
dylanrw
This site seems to be filled with wonderful design goodies.

    
    
      I wish two things:
      1. That I could read Japanese
      2. The site was in English.

------
napierzaza
I get the impression that designers just use the golden ratio as a very quick
way to choose different sizes for objects and layouts. It's really not that
interesting.

~~~
llambda
How is it not interesting that these ratios turn out to be aesthetically
pleasing over and over again? To me, that's fascinating.

~~~
scythe
It's confusing, if you assume that our preferences are totally arbitrary. If
'liking the golden ratio' is a property of being human, it's profound, but not
confusing.

Thing is that the ideal might not be the golden ratio. Maybe we prefer pi/2
instead of (1 + sqrt(5)) / 2. Who's to say? Pi/2 is if anything -more-
fundamental. It seems to be that we don't like things to look too square or
too oblong, which limits us to the range of 4:3 through 7:3 as 'aesthetically
acceptible'. phi just happens to be in the middle of this. So is pi/2, as
noted previously.

You could test this, by showing people some rectangles and asking which ones
they like -- 1.4:1, 1.5:1, 1.6:1, 1.7:1, 1.8:1, 1.9:1, etc.

One thing that's interesting is the rise of 8:5 screen dimensions over the old
styles of 4:3 and 16:9. 8:5 is, coincidentally, right next to phi, and is in
fact a convergent of its continued fraction. 8:5 includes 1280x800, 1440x900,
and 1680x1050, 4:3 includes 640x480 and 1024x768, and 16:9 includes the
oddball 1366x768. It could just be that the math is easier with 8 and 5,
though, since their reciprocals both terminate.

~~~
AlexandrB
Actually for typical (cheap), large consumer displays 16:9 seems to be taking
over. It's increasingly hard to find 16:10 24"+ monitors that aren't >$600.
I'm not sure whether this is due to demand, the economics of larger displays,
or the rise of HD television (720p, 1080p are both 16:9).

~~~
iam
HD televisions. They reuse the same LCD panels in monitors and HDTVs.

------
jmjerlecki
[http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/16/icloud-logo-infused-
with...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/16/icloud-logo-infused-with-golden-
ratio/)

BS is called in the comments section of this article

~~~
jobu
Here's the comment by cheesymogul:
[http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=12774665#post12...](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=12774665#post12774665)

~~~
pohl
_Therefore you can take any 10 good logos or designs, or even well composed
photos, and you'll probably find in 7 out of them the golden ratio implemented
somehow!_

Sounds like a testable claim to me.

~~~
william42
The issue, though, is defining «has the golden ratio implemented somehow» in a
way that it wouldn't be more likely than not that the golden ratio would be
considered «implemented» more often than not if the hypothesis were false
anyways.

------
dkrich
Hey Apple, hows about you come back out of your own asshole?

