
November 13, 2024
4 presentation trends for 2025
Learn which latest presentation trends can make or break your PowerPoint’s message and leave your audience captivated.
Learn moreUsing the golden ratio in your design work can be a powerful tool keeping your compositions orderly and harmonious. Learn more about this divine proportion and how it came to be in your designer toolbox.
The golden ratio, the divine proportion, spirals, curves, triangles, rectangles—there’s a lot to unpack when discussing the topic of what is often represented by the Greek symbol phi.
Powerpoint empowers you to develop well-designed content across all your devices
Learn moreLet’s start with Euclidian geometry (hang tight). While Euclidian’s Elements doesn’t yet use the term “golden ratio,” it does introduce the concept of the golden rectangle: a rectangle whose sides are in the lengths of the golden ratio (1 and 1.618, respectively), and which can become more golden rectangles that exhibit the golden ratio with the addition (or subtraction) of a square inside the rectangle.
Let’s fast forward from 300 BCE to the twelfth century, when Leonardo Fibonacci comes up with his Fibonacci series (which is also called the Fibonacci sequence and Fibonacci numbers). While he wasn’t the first to put this sequence together, it does bear his name. And it goes like this:
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34…
And on and on in that fashion. Put another way:
You get the idea.
How did Fibonacci come up with this sequence? The speedy nature of bunny breeding. Really: The golden ratio came to be as a something of a joke, an idealized (but unnatural) month-by-month math problem to explain how rapidly a family of rabbits might reproduce. But so what? What’s this got to do with the golden rectangle? As the sequence continues along (for forever and ever), each number divided by its predecessor comes closer and closer to the golden ratio—roughly 1.618 (though it also goes on for forever).
By the time the Renaissance is in full swing, the golden ratio reappears under the name the divine proportion, thanks to the publication of mathematician Luca Pacioli’s book aptly titled De divina proportione, which was famously illustrated by da Vinci. This is when 1.618 takes on a bit of a magical, mystical quality—and when artists started to really take heed.
Nautilus shells are popular examples of the golden ratio on full display in nature, but there are others to look out for as well:
Obviously not every fruit, flower, or body will display the golden ratio or Fibonacci spirals, but many do.
Here are some ways you might put the golden ratio to work in your designs:
Not everyone is so convinced that the golden ratio, no matter what it’s called or where it came from, is anything nearly as special as history has made it out to be. Some eschew the idea that the golden ratio is especially aesthetically pleasing or valuable when it comes to design. There have even been studies conducted that show that people don’t have a particularly strong affinity for divine proportions when given a choice.
So why use it?
Like any tool in your design repertoire, using the golden ratio is less a rule or law but more of a suggestion. With so many options ahead of you when you sit down to compose a new work, having an organizing principle like the golden ratio can be a helpful jumping off point. Ultimately, though, what your composition needs is up to you.
The powerful productivity apps and creativity tools in Microsoft 365 just got better. Work, play, and create better than ever before with the apps you love and Microsoft Copilot by your side.
Try for free