Things You Didn't Knew

Posted on Feb 11th 2010 | 4comments

Recently, my article was published on Smashing Magazine titled “Applying Mathematics to Web Design”. You might have observed that none of the designs used Lorem Ipsum for defining content. There were some reasons why I used a particular text in a design. Moreover, there are certain other things which you didn’t knew about the article and which I would like to share with you guys. So, read on!

Golden Rectangle Layout - Why 3?

You can clearly see that the Space Geek layout has three golden rectangles in each row? So, why 3? Why not 2 or 4? One reason for having three golden rectangles in a row was explained in the article itself – “For keeping the consistency of the design.”

However, there was one another reason – It was a small tribute to one of the greatest paintings of Leanardo Da Vinci – “The Last Supper”. The painting contains several references to the number 3. The Apostles are seated in groupings of three; there are three windows behind Jesus; and the shape of Jesus' figure resembles a triangle.

Moreover, did you observe the content in the design? All the content which was displayed in the design actually exists within my hard drives! I have been into astrophysics since years and have a lot of content about beginning of the universe, Newton’s contribution to mechanics and math, Einstein’s Relativity, Quantum Physics and String Theory. The total content is more than 2GB in size.

Fibonacci Layout - God's Own Equation

Once again, it’s about the content. You might have observed that there is a brief paragraph about God’s Own Equation. This is actually a story which I wrote 3 years ago. You can read the full story here – God's Own Equation

I have also mentioned a topic called as “Existence of God” in the content. Believe it or not, but a few years ago I tried to prove the existence of God with the help of science. It was supposed to be a series of philosophical and scientific articles about existence of god. You can read about the series here – Existence of God. It’s an incomplete series and only consists of 3 parts. I still wonder why I took this topic, may be because at that time I was just recovering from Brain Stroke and had weird thoughts going in my mind!!

Kundli Layout - The Fifth Element?

You might have observed that the design consists of four natural elements and yet it has been names as Five Elements design. So, where is the fifth element? The Fifth element is Space. In Hinduism, Space is also considered as an element along with Earth, Sky, Fire and Water. We all know the importance of space/negative space in web design and hence it also plays an integral part in this design. You can see that all the four elements in the design are surrounded by equal negative space on their either sides. Therefore, “Space” as a fifth element gives a balance to the entire design.

Sine Wave Layout - Why Books?

For the sine wave layout, I needed some unrelated content so that the user can focus at a particular content piece.As mentioned in the article, you can use this type of layout to make a timeline of events as events can be unrelated to each other. So, I started looking for some unrelated content and was amazed to notice that it was right in front of my eyes - my bookshelf!!

Giveaway

You already have the psd layouts for the designs mentioned in the article. After a few requests, I am also preparing fully functional wordpress themes of the mentioned designs. To get the themes, you will have to tweet about the article along with a hashtag of the design name.

For example, if you want only the Golden rectangle theme, then use the hashtag #goldenrectangle alongwith the link to the article.

If you want only the Fibonacci theme, then use the hashtag #fibonacci alongwith the link to the article.

If you want only the Kundli theme, then use the hashtag #kundli alongwith the link to the article.

if you want only the Sine Wave theme, then use the hashtag #sinewave alongwith the link to the article.

If you want all the themes, then use the hashtag #alldesigns alongwith the link to the article.

Example Tweet - Applying Mathematics to Web Design - http://goo.gl/Xi4c #goldenrectangle

I hope you have enjoyed the article. Looking forward for your comments!

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