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Geometry Of Design

Do you know grid system? Geometry of Design is a good primer for grid systems. Author Kimberly Allen explains mathematically how art works in a way that we can all understand, helping you understand the basic use cases, proportions, locations of grids, and why certain elements are placed there.

Kimberly studied a variety of 20th century designs, citing examples of classic architecture and illustrations (from Barcelona chairs to Georges Seurat Paintings, from Braun’s hand blender to connico’s kettle), revealing the underlying geometry. The book focuses on scale systems, not only classic ones such as golden section and root rectangle, but also popular ones such as Fibonacci sequence. Through detailed charts, effective insight into the design process. This book can take you to appreciate the beauty of mathematics in design.

Kimberly Elam

As a writer, educator and well-known graphic designer, he has a wide range of works in design education and practice, especially in grid system, font design, image design and other fields. He has many design bestsellers, such as design geometry, typesetting design system, etc.

Ask the first question: when you can’t make it more beautiful, what’s the problem? Do we have any other way to break through and surpass the existing design bottleneck?

Let’s go into the magical nature, into Kimberly Elam’s geometry of design, to understand the fundamental laws existing in human and nature. What are the common characteristics of pinecone, salmon and human body? Pinecones, salmon, human body, what are their common characteristics? In fact, they all have laws of various natural proportions, which provide a basic starting point for the works of many artists and designers

The secret of pinecone: pinecone has 8 clockwise growth lines and 13 anticlockwise growth lines. 8:13 leads to an interesting ratio, which is 1:1.625; What does that mean? Let’s move on。

Sunflower and pinecone are the same. Each seed of sunflower belongs to these two spirals: 21 clockwise spirals and 34 counter clockwise spirals. The ratio is 1:1.619, which is very close to the golden ratio.

Golden section ratio

Golden section is a mathematical proportional relationship, which brings beauty and pleasure to the picture. It can be found in many works of art and in nature. The Parthenon in Athens, Greece, Da Vinci’s Vitruvius, Mona Lisa’s face also conform to the golden rectangle, the last supper also uses the proportion layout.

Fibonacci sequence

There are two interesting properties of Fibonacci sequence

1. The square number of any term in Fibonacci sequence is equal to the product of two adjacent terms plus 1 or minus 1;

2. Take any four adjacent Fibonacci numbers, and the difference between the product of the middle two numbers (inner product) and the product of the two numbers on both sides (outer product) is 1

Because I am very interested in the solid geometry module of mathematics, and this book just uses examples in life to more clearly describe the golden section of nature and human application in many things and buildings, which is very interesting. I feel very magical when I read it for the first time, and I will find more interesting details when I read it for the second time and the third time. This is a book I love very much.