Usability Views Article Details  home | timeline | recent | popular | e-reports | userati | books | about  The Plastic Number and the Divine Proportion (10 May 2004) When faced with this situation pragmatism is the choice. Following Tufte, if the nature of the representation suggests its shape, follow it. If not, preferably use a wider rather than a taller shape with a proportion that appears useful or pleasant to you. In my personal opinion, consistently using a coherent scale, be it the golden section, the plastic number or whatever else is always a good choice to build harmonious representations. But here the key is consistency, not the proportion itself. Article URL: http://www.infovis.net/printMag.php?num=145&lang=2 Read 159 more articles from InfoVis sorted by date, popularity, or title. Next Article: Web content management a process, not a project     This site is a labour of love built by Chris McEvoy