
Golden Ratio - alianinfo
https://www.melted.design/golden-ratio/
======
endorphone
"Golden Ratio is a natural ratio found everywhere. From flowers to shells,
from our fingers to the galaxy, this mathematical ratio makes all forms look
visually balanced and gratifying."

Both of those claims have been broadly debunked, and the so-called golden
ratio is grossly oversold.

~~~
jacobolus
It does show up in plants (artichokes, cactuses, sunflowers, pineapples,
etc.), as the angle between successive leaves/seeds/petals. This is called
spiral phyllotaxis. You can make some cool art out of this idea with a strobe
light, [https://www.johnedmark.com/phi/](https://www.johnedmark.com/phi/)

It also shows up anywhere with pentagonal (or icosahedral) symmetry, since the
golden ratio is the ratio of the diagonal to the side of a pentagon. So that
includes e.g. various viruses with a shape based on icosahedral symmetry.

The stuff about shells, galaxies, etc. (and the supposed advantages of this
specific aspect ratio for design / visual art) is generally bullshit.

~~~
bjornjaja
Definitely not bullshit with respect to art—it is used in many aesthetically
pleasing and well balanced designs.

~~~
kingbirdy
But that doesn't mean the golden ratio is the reason it's aesthetically
apealling. There is good art that uses the ratio, and bad art that uses it,
and good art that doesn't use it.

~~~
bjornjaja
Agreed, but it’s recursive nature does make it appealing in ways other ratios
do not.

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hnarayanan
While the Golden Ratio is really popular, there are many other ratios that are
aesthetically pleasing for different scenarios. I’ve tried to visualise some
of them:
[https://github.com/hnarayanan/orthogons/blob/master/README.m...](https://github.com/hnarayanan/orthogons/blob/master/README.md)

~~~
Red_Tarsius
That reminds me of the classic proportions described by Jay Hambridge in _The
Elements of Dynamic Symmetry_ (1926). He was an art historian who argued that
the Greco-Roman art and architecture was based on _root rectangles_.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_rectangle#Jay_Hambidge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_rectangle#Jay_Hambidge)
I just noticed that Wersin is mentioned right after him!

Hambridge's theories were quite controversial, but the book is an enjoyable
read anyway.
[https://archive.org/details/ElementsOfDynamicSymmetryHambidg...](https://archive.org/details/ElementsOfDynamicSymmetryHambidge)

~~~
dmix
Have you found any utility in this stuff with your work?

I mostly just use frameworks that think about this stuff for me while working
hard to keep consistency in spacing (padding, margins, etc) which functional
ones like basscss and tachyons do a good job of pushing you towards (much more
than Bootcamp and others).

~~~
hnarayanan
What frameworks do you use that think about this? All the “big ones” that I
know of, Bootstrap, Foundation, ... have really standard 12 column grids.

~~~
dmix
I'm talking about letting frameworks handle the space ratios for
padding/margins/headline size in addition to grids. Whether they use golden
ratios specifically or not wasnt the point rather deferring to the library
designers who most certainly are aware of the golden ratio.

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nessunodoro
To me the connection between the golden ratio and beauty is tied to iterated
function systems, and fractals. I feel like it boils down to efficiency of
representation of a larger system. If a complex, balanced system can be
represented efficiently by a small number of values, variables, and
operations, then it's favored by the universe somehow, and by our mind's eye.
It "snaps into place" more easily, it aligns with itself, and therefore our
conception of it is also performed with less work, more "naturally."

The golden rectangle and spiral represent this best to me. The whole is found
in the parts, infinitely, the further you iterate, like looking down a well
and seeing all the way to the bottom. It's gratifying to conceive of more by
doing less. I wish I were better with words, but I do feel φ's beauty somehow
boils down to efficiency of representation.

~~~
yowlingcat
There's an interesting correlation to information theory and compressibility.
Someone did an analysis of pop lyrics[1] where they compressed the plaintext
using a lossless compression algorithm and determined that (as expected) many
pop songs compress very well and are highly redundant. But taken another
angle, this could also represent that we as human beings find lyrics which
have high degrees of self-similarity with small amounts of variation to be
pleasing to the ear, which tracks with what makes pop music (which must be
singable and usually danceable to go viral) successful.

[1] [https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-
repetition/](https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/)

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andrewljohnson
Not content-related but... I dislike the inertial scrolling on this page.
Something about inertial scrolling with a mousewheel feels off. Maybe it's
because mousewheels have discrete ticks that I subconsciously use, that get
broken by the inertial paradigm?

~~~
the_pwner224
It's just unexpected and unnecessary. On mobile I'm pretty sure all the
browsers already have it, on desktop it completely breaks expectations for
what should happen.

Also it is turned up to an extreme degree here. I'm using Firefox and the
scrolljacking doesn't happen in FF, but when I open it up in another browser,
a scrollwheel flick that would normally scroll down 1/4rd of the page is
enough to continue down all the way to the very end. Even with smaller
scrolls, it goes around 1.5-2.5x the expected distance.

Scrolling is muscle memory and the consistent behaviour of it makes us have
expectations for what scrolling should do, flagrantly destroying those will
cause unease.

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qrbLPHiKpiux
Dentist here. I use it all the time, front teeth proportions, size, etc when
reconstructing them.

~~~
bigbaguette
The artistic aspect of dentistry is often underestimated

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dr_dshiv
Did you know that the golden ratio defines the temporal structure of the
brain?

While the main brainwave bands are harmonics (theta is roughly double delta,
alpha is roughly double theta, beta is roughly double alpha and so on), the
band _widths_ have a ratio of the golden ratio. That's because the golden
ratio is the most irrational number. While harmonic oscillations will overlap
regularly, irrational frequency ratios will _never_ overlap. This allows for
multiplexing in the brain, EMG , where high theta and low theta don't
interfere with one another.

Pletzer, B., Kerschbaum, H., & Klimesch, W. (2010). When frequencies never
synchronize: the golden mean and the resting EEG. Brain research, 1335,
91-102.

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std_throwaway
The golden ratio is the _most irrational_ number:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaasbfdJdJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaasbfdJdJg)

This is why it creates some distinctive patterns when applied to
circular/spiral shapes.

~~~
thechao
It's the fraction that converges the "slowest", in a sense. (It's the
continued fraction of all 1's.)

~~~
notfashion
It might converge more slowly than any other simple continued fraction, but
there are some super-slow to converge generalized continued fractions. A
couple of examples that are slower than phi:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_%CF%80#Conti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_%CF%80#Continued_fractions)

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tsar_nikolai
I love this because it is both bullshit and awesome. Like many things thats
either a rule-of-thumb or subjective, it has been studied thoroughly,
confirmed, debunked, and applied succesfully many times.

~~~
miere
It’s just like Pareto Principle: it only works in 80% of cases.

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dmckeon
For travelers wanting a rough-and-ready conversion of miles to kilometers, the
ratio is useful: 3 miles ~= 5 km; 8 km~= 5 miles; etc.

Discussion at:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/2zop5o/i_realised_the...](https://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/2zop5o/i_realised_the_golden_ratio_is_by_a_coincidence/cpkw3fr/)

~~~
adele11
Even easier don't think about the ratio! Think about the Fibonacci sequence: 0
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 etc. Then you are doing just addition.

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shkkmo
The coolest thing I learned recently is that you can create a isocahedron by
connecting the vertices of three perpendicular golden rectangles.

~~~
jobigoud
It's _icosahedron_ :-)

This relation is seen in the coordinates of the vertices of the solid: all
permutations of (0, ±1, ±golden ratio).

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krsdcbl
This isn't too insightful. The article swimmingly explains that there is a
"golden ratio" and then goes on to just repeat "you can use that in design",
with no concrete examples or explanations aside a small use case for font
sizing

~~~
notfashion
The idea is that you can use it anywhere you need to make a decision about
proportions. It's not complicated. Designers know that it's no use if you need
a proportion close to 1:10 or 1:1, but there is often enough flexibility to
use it (say when designing a window or a floor plan.)

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rockwotj
All articles about the Golden Ratio mostly make me think about when Donald
Duck in "Mathmagic Land"

See: [https://youtu.be/fwYfuJfIgaw](https://youtu.be/fwYfuJfIgaw)

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ebg13
A gigantic image that fills my screen, and then teeny tiny text that I need a
microscope to make out. This is design, I guess. Thanks, golden ratio! What
ever happened to "Type is to Read"?

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tzury
This is a great tool I use anytime I sketch an interface:
[https://goldieapp.com/](https://goldieapp.com/)

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Aspos
__(a) + (b) = (a) + (b) / (a) = 1.618 __

They can 't into math, can they? Or is it a special notation of some sort?

~~~
knolan
It should be

a / b = (a + b)/a = 1 + b / a = 1.618..

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karmakaze
Should have 'in Design' in the title [but I should've guessed from the
domain].

~~~
asciident
More like Fiction than Design, frankly.

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hota_mazi
Terrible article:

> Let’s imagine that you need to start your design by creating a line. Next,
> you copy it and divide it into two parts, getting two shapes a) the first
> line, and b) the second one.

What does this even mean? What are the constraints between these two lines
that leads to that ratio to be the golden ratio?!?

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decafbad
The page forces a very bad type of smooth scrolling with js.

