Golden ratio grid for A4 landscape posters?

In my younger days I worked in the print trade at the time that the International Paper Sizes (the A sizes) were introduced in Britain, replacing the old British Standard paper sizes.

The A paper sizes are root 2 rectangles (if the short side is 1, the long side is equal to the square root of 2 [roughly 1.4] or put another way, the long side is the diagonal of a square of the short side). It's not precisely Golden Ratio but it's close. One technique commonly used at the time they were introduced was to exploit this relationship between the square and the A sizes by using the square of the short side (either from the top or the bottom) to divide the space. A variation on the theme is to use a circle (a circular picture/illustration/pattern for example) instead of a square.

In the illustration, 1 shows the basic divisions, upper and lower. In 2 the root 2 rectangle is divided using the upper square; the remaining area at the bottom comprises of a square (a) and another root 2 rectangle (b). Area b can also be divided in a similar manner. These divisions were used to determine placement of and/or sizing/cropping of the elements of the design. The circle within the square is indicated by c.

That said good design is hand, heart, eye and brain. The danger here is that you end up with all brain and no heart.

Like I wrote over in the Print Design forum:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4243314

Basically at The Complex Grid I got as far as finding the number of lines I needed. 4 lines would be perfect - lines 2 and 3 could contain my text, and lines 1 and 4 could form the surrounding space. But {4-(2-1)}/2 didn't add up - only {5-(2-1)}/2 did - and I have no idea how to make it work with 5 lines. Anybody know what to do?

Thanks!

The Golden Ratio is not a Golden Rule, but more of an advice. It deals with proportions between text and margins, and so one would assume the page orientation does not matter.

I don 't think the Golden Ratio is the most important thing in the world -- there is no reason to assume *everything* in print should abide by it. You are correct in your observation. the examples only show pages with plain text and headlines, that is where it's ar it best (for whatever value you like to assign to "best").

Your poster looks fine. For such a large white space, I would center the text block both horizontally and vertically; it's hard to see on your image, but it *looks* to be slightly off in both directions. Alternatively, you could move it vertically off the center, not by a small amount but by a lot (as they say, "piss or get off the pot! (well, some people I know would say that)).