Apple’s iCloud Icon Uses The Golden Ratio

BS is called in the comments section of this article

The part followed by:

> One of these has been stretched vertically 20%, or reduced vertically 20%. Which one do you find most pleasing? Most dramatic? Most like the real thing?

The one on the left is more pleasing to me. The one on the right looks garish. The one on the right is the stretched one right? In fact they both look distorted to me, I believe the images also are being scaled to irregular proportions by the HTML. A direct link to the source image of the one on the left looks correct to me: http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/pseudo/nashv.jpg But I'm no expert and maybe I'm making a fool of myself.

But going back to the author's intention, I read the sentence I quoted several times, and I still don't know what his preference is. The fact that he said "most dramatic" makes me think he prefer the one on the right?

With respect to using the golden ratio in design. I am a designer. I've never used the golden ratio, but I understand the desire to. As design is discipline with very few rules, we latch onto anything concrete, whether the benefits are real or imaginary. Otherwise it just feels like shooting in the dark. While I'm agnostic on whether the golden ratio is actually objectively attractive or not, the benefits of using a framework like this I find to be invaluable.

Here is what I mean: lets say you use the golden ratio to layout out a blog, i.e., place the logo, main content, sidebar, etc... Then you use the golden ratio again to layout an individual blog post, i.e., the header, the text of the post, maybe a pull quote, and some inline images. Now you've done something I can attest to the benefits of, because you've created a harmonious repetition of proportion through-out the design. When I look back at my own design work, the strongest dividing line between the work I am proud of and the work I am no longer proud of, is just this. When I started using a concrete system to repeat proportion through out the design, to my admittedly subjective eye, the quality of my design work greatly increased.