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I am surprised to read how modern architecture (or font design) disregard optical balance, when this is so instrumental to looking good: as in, I am not seeing

I am surprised to read how modern architecture (or font design) disregard optical balance, when this is so instrumental to looking good: as in, I am not seeing it, but maybe I am looking through rose-coloured glasses. I don't think anyone would call me artistic, even if I dabbled in typography (both of the book design and font design variety), furniture and interior architecture (some exterior too): but I keep needing to draw things starting with pure geometric shapes and precise symmetry and then move them around to make it appealing even to me. For instance, other than the obvious curvature in pillars in Parthenon, the spacing between them is even more important: notice how outward pillars have the next one closer to avoid the vast emptiness outside unbalance them. The same holds true for fonts, both kerning and character design, but another thing not mentioned is how medium has influenced the design (ink dispersion needs different "holes" in heavy weight forms). The same holds for architecture and materials being used.

nubero 1y ago
You made a good catch with the spacing of the columns! I actually wrote about it in the article in the 7th footnote. But that is where it had to remain because – as I assume you know from how you write – it’s a rabbit hole. We could go further and mention that behind the inner columns is actually the cella (inner chamber), which would make for a darker backdrop of these columns than the outermost columns, which would be set against the blue sky, would have. That too makes for a difference in perception and is a further reason, why the outermost columns are set more closely to their cella-backed neighbour columns… And so on, and so on… :-)