1 The Golden Ratio is a myth

Almost every composition book these days talks about the Golden Ratio or the Golden Rectangle, but it turns out that even the textbook examples, such as the Parthenon and the human figure, don’t conform to those ratios any more than they do to other mathematical relations, such as pi or Vitruvian relations of whole numbers. No rectangle or grid stands out from the others as ‘golden’. If a certain proportion gives us a warm feeling, it's because we've trained ourselves to appreciate it. For a complete discussion of this topic, see my five-part blog series, ‘Mythbusting the

Golden Mean’ at www.gurneyjourney.blogspot.co.uk.