Divine Proportions in Design

I always try to apply the Golden Ratio or divine proportions to web design. It just makes the design look good without much effort or needing to be fancy. It’s also a well known property within photography, sometimes simplified as the rule of thirds.

I stumbled upon Facebook’s homepage today. Me and a million others I guess. Though I’ve seen that page often before, I suddenly became aware how well Facebook had laid things out there. I then started to measure the proportions they used. I was amazed how pixel perfect they’ve applied the Golden Ratio of their design to almost all elements. Notice the use of space above the logo and the footer. Take a look at a million other sites, and you’ll notice no such space and usually centered design.

In the picture below each line is divided into a green and a red part. The ratio of those two is the golden ratio, i.e. 1.61803399. It is precise to the pixel.

How much of Facebook’s success could be attributed to their extreme use of the beautiful Golden Ratio?