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I didn't know the A series of paper sizes was built around the golden rectangle. Vignelli had some strong opinions on the US standard: The international Standa
by sshanky 12y ago
I didn't know the A series of paper sizes was built around the golden rectangle. Vignelli had some strong opinions on the US standard:
The international Standard paper sizes, called the A series, is based on a golden rectangle, the divine proportion. It is extremely handsome and practical as well. It is adopted by many countries around the world and is based on the German DIN metric Standards. The United States uses a basic letter size (8 1/2 x 11”) of ugly proportions, and results in complete chaos with an endless amount of paper sizes. It is a by-product of the culture of free enterprise, competition and waste. Just another example of themisinterpretations of freedom.
The A4 is the basic size for stationary. Two thirds of it is a square, a nice economical happenstance resulting from the golden rectangle. It is one of the reasons we tend to use as much as possible the DIN sizes: proportions are always leading to other nice proportions. This does not happen with the American basic size which leads to nothing. I counted 28 different standard sizes in USA!. The only reason we use it is because everybody in USA uses it, all stationary in USA is that size, so are manilla folders, files and office equipment! The repercussion of ugliness is endless.
- teh_klev 12y ago>"I didn't know the A series of paper sizes was built around the golden rectangle." It's late so forgive me if I'm wrong (and my maths/geometry ended at high school level back in 1985), but I don't think that's correct. 'A' series paper dimensions are based on the square root of two [1] which is a ratio of 1:4142. The golden rectangle has a ratio of 1:1.618 [2]. 'A' series paper sizes are basically halves of the parent size. You can't fit a golden spiral into that geometry. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_standard:_ISO_216 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_s... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rectangle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rectangle
- twelvechairs 12y agoA sizes (1:√2 ratio) are related to the 'silver ratio' (not gold) which is "1:1+√2". Regardless of names of precious metals, its a ratio using simpler numbers than "letter" format, which generally means it's more aesthetically pleasing [Edit] it should be noted that (arguably) many Gothic cathedrals are based on a √2 ratio
- teh_klev 12y agoI didn't know about the silver ratio, or rather that 1:√2 ratio is known as the silver ratio. Thanks for enlightening me.
- theoh 12y agoThe other constraint is that A0 sheets are one square metre in area. This leads to the neat formula for page sizes in metres being pow(2,(+ or -)1/4 - n/2) where n is the number of the sheet size. It's rounded to the nearest mm. Discussion here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-paper.html It's embarrassing but not too surprising that Vignelli confuses root 2 with phi. The culture of design and also architecture places a lot of importance on having things "just so" and much less importance on the reason why. It's an "uncertainty avoidance" thing, to use Hofstede's terms. It's not uncommon to hear strange claims about exact proportions in the human body from architects, which is part of the same attitude. There's a recent book of investigations of phi by graphic artists that is slightly more rigorous: http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/feb/25/golden-meaning-graphic-artists-maths-golden-ratio http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numbe...
- RickS 12y agoHere's a great chart on the way the A series paper is subdivided: http://i.imgur.com/5yw7b6Q.jpg http://i.imgur.com/5yw7b6Q.jpg