Proportion vs Scale

John Spacey, June 22, 2017

Proportion is the relative size of parts of a whole. The classic example is the relative size of parts of your face such as eyes and nose.

Scale is the relative size of separate elements such as a person compared to a building.

Proportion & Scale

Proportion and scale are art terms that are applicable to many types of design including a visual design such as a graphic and physical design such as a building or product.

It is common to adopt the design principle that proportion and scale reflect the real world. In other words, that the size of each element should look natural relative to all other elements in the design. Where a design has depth, elements further away are smaller.

Human Scale

Physical things are normally designed to human scale. This means that things are designed to a size that is useful for people.

Human scale applies to things directly used by people, such as a spoon. Large scale infrastructure such as a dam can also be designed to human scale. For example, a dam might have doors, tunnels and other features design for maintenance crews.

A road is designed to human scale because most roads are structured to support the width of cars. Cars in turn are designed to seat two or three people comfortably side by side in each row. If people were 10 meters wide, roads would be wider too.