To support these statements, lets look at examples of man-made objects. Use grids to line things up. This golden section has some relation to basic geometry that seems to resonate with a human's sense of beauty. Jagged and inconsistent lines are less likely to be appealing. Bold Titles 2. If the straight lines are not straight, but crumpled or dented, chances are you won't buy that carton. All of these are man-made objects that benefit in usability from straight or evenly curved lines.

The same applies to many forms of composition. (That direction is up, by the way, unless you are on the opposite side of the Earth, in which case it would be down. Nope, this is more important! The creation of your media and site products. If you're really into math, you can do a search to learn more. OK, OK, but how does this apply to my intelligent ___________ (fill in the blank - web site, ad, package design, solar electric car, hair)? For your designs, line up your stuff in straight lines. Curvature of the earth - smoother than the curvature of an 8 ball. Some sites pack in so much information on one page that there are no margins or breathing space between elements.) Again, this is usability for the tree - a competition in height to get to the sun. Putting text right against the edge of another element has a claustrophobic feel. Lists of items 3. Trees are basically straight lines.

Using the Grid 5. The golden section looks nice. Indented text All these things break up the monotony of straight lines and can add rhythm to a design.When talking about intelligent design, we are not talking about the creation of man. Giving Design elements Room to Breathe Even things that line up do not generally look good if they can't breathe. On roads, the matter is quite important to health. You can change it up with: 1. Experienced designers often intuitively use a grid without physically having a grid in the design. There are some very basic things about design that one can learn that can vastly improve one's ability to make appealing and intelligent creations. The 5 goes in one straight line for mile after mile after hour after hours.

Which would you rather drive? Likewise, with web sites, if everything lines up on the same line, the page is likely to look very boring. Some of those things are: 1. Lets look at desks. For those of us not so into math, the Golden Section is a little more than a third. A design with many elements lining up and a few elements that don't can create nice contrast, yet starting with things that line up is a nice easy rule for beginners. Hey, no doubt - some people are into that. Of course, one must know rules to know which ones to break, so these rules are only guidelines. Sure, curved buildings are beautiful too, yet the curves are often very even, and more often than not, the curve is accompanied by a straight line in another dimension. Roads, desks, walls, buildings, orange juice containers. Using Variation 3. For example, straight long roads with no turns are quite boring. Lining Things Up 2. Things that are all over the place don't look nice.

The trunks of a redwood forest all go in one direction with remarkable consistency. I say apparently because road barriers prevent a driver from seeing the whole turn going into it and there are a bunch of tire marks etched up the construction barrier right at the point of the change in curvature. The forms of all these objects are straight or consistent and any deviation from this norm is considered mildly repulsive. OK, orange juice - very nice to ship little square boxes. Leaves - straight veins out to the tips - same idea, get some (light). Using Variation Things that line up and have no variation are boring. Conclusion When designing things, remember: Line things up, but don't get boring. Peace. Line up images so that image edges are lined up with image edges and lines, text with text, and other elements inline with other elements. The Golden Section 6. The 58 zigzags across the arid Southern California desert, between mountains, with every few miles a turn. Give Massage ball your images and text margins, frames or room to breathe. In the final design this grid is usually removed, but used in layout to ensure things line up nicely.

Obviously straight and even desks are good for writing, fit against straight walls well and look nice, at least to me. Yet if there is too much breaking up of the lines, the design can become junky looking noise That is hard to read. The Golden Section There is a thing called the golden section, the golden ratio or the divine proportion. The result is in uncomfortableness and unreadability. Lets take a look at nature. This is a fundamental design principle yet, some websites are all over the place with every image and section of text every which way.

In general though, straight orsmooth lines are appealing. Use the Grid, Luke To help you line things up, use graph paper, the Adobe Photoshop grid or draw a measured grid yourself. Lining Things Up Things that line up look nice. Buildings, like desks are convenient shapes for space efficiency, map drawing, road creation, furniture and room modularity. Long rectangles make a nice canvas for marketing. . If you take a picture, it just happens to look real nice if you show a little more than two thirds sky. Giving Breathing Room 4. Something to do with gravity which, for existence as we know it, is quite useful. There is a merge under construction from the 60 East (that's how we identify freeways here in California) to the 215 South, where the turn starts at one size circumstance then abruptly veers a few degrees tighter to another sized circumstance. This slight change in curvature results in a driver having to adjust for this change with a slight, and apparently unexpected, turn of the wheel.