Comments on: Secret Symphony: Intro to Golden Ratio Typography

By: Tim

Tim — Sat, 23 Sep 2017 13:49:04 +0000

Iam impressed but confused at the same time. :) Here is why:

The viewport / device-width of an iPhone is typically 360px.
According to your calculation, we need:

font-size: 12px;
line-height:19px;

But thats realy small, no fun to read at all.
Did I something wrong, or is the golden ratio just not “designed” for typography on smartphones? :)

later,
Tim

By: G. Omikron

G. Omikron — Wed, 06 Sep 2017 12:49:44 +0000

Thanks for the article. It’s a nice resource. Could you please provide more information, or even some references, regarding the last set of equations? Thanks

By: Ricky

Ricky — Sun, 05 Mar 2017 22:13:14 +0000

I learn a lot about web typography. It was really amazing to see the amount of things that we need to do in order to provide a readable website. Thanks a lot for sharing this valuable information.

By: Kevin Pryce

Kevin Pryce — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 01:49:22 +0000

I would love to see your calculator updated to use em or % values. This would provide a more useful calculation for modern, responsive designs.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 00:03:46 +0000

Hi Chris. Great article. I would like to know, whether you can lead me through your derivation for the relationship between line height and line width. Thanks in advance. Matt.

By: Ben Whitmore

Ben Whitmore — Mon, 01 Aug 2016 03:58:43 +0000

I respectfully disagree with most of this article.

The golden mean has long been vaunted as the paragon of beauty and functionality — with little evidence to support it.

There are many factors to consider in choosing typefaces and sizing and spacing blocks of text. Robert Bringhurst’s “Elements of Typographic Design” is a thorough and wonderfully readable guide to what professional type designers look for. I highly recommend it. The golden mean is _not_ a consideration in line-spacing (“leading”), which is determined more by the visual characteristics of the typeface, the size of the block and the surrounding negative spaces on the page. Some fonts are designed to read well set “solid” — i.e., with no extra spacing at all; some may need more than the golden mean, depending on context.

Optimum paragraph width is determined by how much the fovea of the eye can compass for easy reading down the block without a lot of sideways eye moment. Depending on the size of the text, optimum widths tend to be between around 55 and 80 characters to a line.

So this golden-mean theory is, in my opinion, simplistic, mechanical, wrong, and a misdirection away from the real art of typography. It’s like saying the most beautiful font is Garamond, therefore all text should always be set in Garamond. The world (and the page) is so much more complex than that.

By: Gaurav Bhatnagar

Gaurav Bhatnagar — Thu, 14 Jul 2016 18:16:57 +0000

How does this apply to headings and an overall typesetting of text including margins? Once the baseline font size and line-height are established, what size and margins should an h1, h2, h3, etc. have to adhere to the golden ratio?

By: Digital Marketing Dave

Digital Marketing Dave — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 02:16:14 +0000

Thank you for the in depth look at typeface and the golden ratio.

By: Sebastian Solecki

Sebastian Solecki — Wed, 13 Apr 2016 10:25:53 +0000

In reply to Stefan Vorkoetter.

After reading this article I was pretty sure that somewhere must be such comment. Please respond to this.

Imagine that you use font size 0,625 (units are not important). Then optimal line-height is 1.. 1^2 is still 1…

By: Alex C.

Alex C. — Fri, 25 Mar 2016 21:19:33 +0000

In reply to Amelia. I totally agree with your comment on using the x-height (rather than font-size) as a basis for building larger ratios. I'd be interested in hearing more about your idea.