Today we looked at the Vitruvian Man and the Golden Ratio to examine some of the core principles of design.
The Vitruvian Man was created by Leonardo da Vinci around the year 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius Pollio. The drawing depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and simultaneously inscribed in a circle and square. The drawing and text are sometimes called the Canon of Proportions or, less often, Proportions of Man.
The proportional relationship of the parts reflects the universal design. And a "medical" equilibrium of elements ensures a stable structure. These qualities are thus shared equally by God's creation of the human body and the human being's own production of a good building. In the late 1480s, this theme of the artistic microcosm emerged as one of the great unifying principles of his thought. This architectural application is not the end of the matter, however; it only represents the beginning of a concept which had a literally universal application.
This image provides a perfect example of Leonardo's keen interest in proportion. In addition, this picture represents a cornerstone of Leonardo's attempts to relate man to nature. Encyclopaedia Britannica online states,
"Leonardo envisaged the great picture chart of the human body he had produced through his anatomical drawings and Vitruvian Man as a cosmografia del minor mondo (cosmography of the microcosm). He believed the workings of the human body to be an analogy for the workings of the universe."
The Golden Ratio (symbol is the Greek letter "phi") is a special number approximately equal to 1.618, It appears many times in geometry, art, architecture and other areas.
The Golden Ratio exists when a line is divided into two parts and the longer part (a) divided by the smaller part (b) is equal to the sum of (a) + (b) divided by (a), which both equal 1.618.
In design, the Golden Ratio boils down to aesthetics— creating and appreciating a sense of beauty through harmony and proportion. When applied to design, the Golden Ratio provides a sense of artistry.
This harmony and proportion has been recognised for thousands of centuries: from the Pyramids ****in Giza ****to the Parthenon in Athens; from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa; and again to the Pepsi logo. Our brains are hard-wired to prefer visuals that follow the Golden Ratio. Every minor change made to an image or object that makes it follow the Golden Ratio even a little closer has a major impact on our perception of it.
