imperfect perfectness

In reading this weeks article assignment, I found the part about the spacing in the font letters very interesting. The article says "One such feature that is quite noticeable to the readers’ perceptual system is symmetry." The LILAC example was really interesting showing how imperfect spacing results in visually perfect appearance.

This is not a new concept, it has been around for thousands of years. I was reminded about the Parthenon in Athens. Ancient-Greece.org has a good article showing how the ancients knew how to space objects so they appear perfect. This article says

"The architects of the Parthenon appear to be excellent scholars of visual illusion, an attribute undoubtedly sharpened by years of architectural refinement and observation of the natural world. They designed the columns that appear at the corners of the temple to be 1/40th (about 6 cm) larger in diameter than all the other columns, while they made the space around them smaller than the rest of the columns by about 25 cm. The reason for this slight adaptation of the corner columns is due to the fact that they are set against the bright sky, which would make them appear a little thinner and a little further apart than the columns set against the darker background of the building wall. The increase in size and decrease of space thus compensates for the illusion that the bright background would normally cause."

VisualIllusions.net points out some other interesting visual illusion facts on the Parthenon, such that the base line is not perfectly straight, that is it buckled to appear straight. It is amazing how the ancient architects were able to take into consideration all these variables.