Category Archives: 02. PROPORTION TRENDS

The proportions of an object are best imagined by a bounding box surrounding the form. That box can be stretched, scaled, compressed, accelerated, skewed, etc. Proportional design trends involve objects that skew away from the normal aspect ratio for a given product category. Think limousine compared to the standard sedan, or Macbook Air compared to a normal laptop. Manipulating proportions can have a dramatic impact on the perceptions of a product. By streching, compressing, or scaling those proportions, an object can take on more premium, high-tech, sleek, or dominant expressions. However, such modifications almost always demand rearchitecting or modifying internal components, placing demands on internal engineering and manufacturing capacities to innovate around these new aspect ratios.



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Every product, in every category, in every era has a certain established architecture that serves as the foundational structure for the product’s design. The origin of this architecture is usually highly evolutionary, building incrementally upon previous successful iterations until an optimized pattern emerges. Modern cars still have four wheels, one...

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One of the most important (and most overlooked) elements of design that can have the greatest effect on an objects overall aesthetics are its proportions. Short and wide, long and skinny, accelerating or tapering, many designers typically accept the proportions they are dealt at the beginning of a project and...

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