Friday, February 10, 2012

Composing images with the Suggestion of Thirds



















About two years ago I read Andrew Dlugan’s blog post on How to Improve Your PowerPoint Slides with the the Rule of Thirds. As shown above, it is a rule for composing images. More recently I read Paul Caputo’s post on the IBD (Interpretation by Design) blog which explained how - The Rule of Thirds: It’s Just a Suggestion.




















 Other posts by Oliver Adria and Garr Reynolds have pointed out that using guide lines a third of the way across or down is an approximation based on the geometrically fascinating Golden Mean, also known as the Golden Ratio, Phi. As shown above, placing them at 33% just is an easy “rule of thumb” approximation to 38.2%.

Paul Caputo’s post also noted that there is a Rule of Fifths, and he gives some examples of it. His post opened by stating that the Rule of Thirds is not about how many trips you should take through a meal buffet in Las Vegas. Similarly, the Rule of Fifths is not about how much liquor you should consume.

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