Design series: scales

Designing means restricting yourself and making choices. This is also true for the size of elements. How big should text and space elements be? One way to do that is to define a scale. A scale should be based on multiplicative factors as it keeps the ratios no matter the distance or magnification of the display.

Here are some of the most basic scales:

• 2:1: 1, 2, 4, 8
• 3:2: 1, 1.5, 2.25, 3.375
• 4:3: 1, 1.333, 1.778, 2.370
• 5:4: 1, 1.25, 1.563, 1.953

One can also use two scales together.