This is no joke, it really happened.
Two years ago, approximately. We really tore into Letter paper (Pun intended). Such complaints as:
"It's too short"
"It's too fat"
and
"It's bad for making paper airoplanes" were heard.
The last one was me. I brought a brilliant book back from England on 20+ designs of varying difficulties. The Split Nose Cone Glider wa always my favourate. I can still make it with my eyes (half) closed. I cant find my favourate, but here is a close one I found on the t'internet. Effectivley what I found was that US letter paper made bad airoplanes!
We had discussed the merits of the 2 paper sizes and came to the opinion that A4 rules. I believe that I said at some point I said that A4 was more aesthetically pleasing. I cannot find a back up for this, but wikipedia does say:
ISO paper sizes are all based on a single aspect ratio of the square root of two, or approximately 1:1.4142. The advantages of basing a paper size upon this ratio were already noted in 1786 by the German scientist Georg Lichtenberg (in a letter to Johann Beckmann): if a sheet with aspect ratio √2 is horizontally divided into two equal halves, then the halves will again have aspect ratio √2.
Which to a geek like me basically says that it is at least very cool!
This did at some point get me thinking about the photographs I take. The 6x4 size most people see is popular I believe because of the aesthetics of the size itself. I as a personal maxim try never to crop the photos I take. There are 2 very simple reasons for this.
1. What I see through the viewfinder or on the LCD screen is what I want im the picture. If I have to crop, it says to me 'Chris you did not frame this picture well. You included only the top half of the naked man' or something along those lines.
2. I'm too lazy to crop photos.
What this post for me is about is this. When you crop a photo, take a look at the image you want to capture or show and take a brief thought and say to yourself this...
... is this an ugly rectangle?
1 comment:
Howdy Chris, enjoying you blog. Here is my theory on aesthetic preference of A4 over letter (which, I have to admit, I've never run across- in fact, I didn't even know the USA had their own paper sizes). The ratio of A4 is as you pointed out 1.41 or thereabouts, the ratio of North American Letter is 1.33 (ish), and the Golden Ratio is 1.68. Which one's closer? There's your back up- you can't argue with the Ancient Greeks :)
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