04.03 - Proportion - The Foundations of Typography
Chapter 04 - Layout & Composition
Lesson 03 - Proportion
The proportions of your typography are vital to how readers perceive your content. Type has many parts that are relative to one another. Everything in your design exists in relation to everything else.
As we discussed earlier, font size, leading, line lengths are proportionally related. The ideal length of a line of text is from 45 to 75 characters—including spaces. Anything that reaches far from that range becomes hard to read. Line switching too often when measures are too short and not enough breaks for the eyes when the measures are too long.
Harmonious Proportions and the Golden Section
The golden section is a ratio that has not only been used in Western art and architecture for more than two thousand years, but exists throughout nature in many forms.
As you may already know, when we take two successive fibonacci numbers, their ratio is very close to the golden ratio.
(ex: 1 + 2 = 3; 13 + 21 = 34, etc)
This gives you approximately a 1:1.618 ratio, and if you apply that aspect ratio to a rectangle, you'll have created a golden rectangle.
The golden section, which appears in nature as well as art and design, has many interesting properties. For instance, if you remove a square from a golden rectangle, the remainder is another golden rectangle. By doing this repeatedly, and joining the corners of the squares, you'll create a golden ratio spiral which can infinitely continue.
Golden ratio typography is intended to serve as a basis for proper typesetting and can be applied in various methods such as the proportions of your grid, or the proportions of your line length to height of your paragraph.
Give this typography calculator by pearsonifed a shot:
Typography Calculator with Golden Ratio
Now that you've sharpened your knowledge in proportions, why don't you try The Equilateral Triangle game once more? Let us know what you score!
