The golden ratio is NOT the first point of web design

As we see a lot of essays on the golden radio in a context of web design today. Recently we can read the same topic at NETTUTS and I would like to resist againt such perspective in design.

The golden radio has never been the first point of design long time before, and only amateur “teachers” can teach or inform for novice designers that this is a handy and miracle tool for (web) design.

I must say Nays against such tutorials.

Maybe not the supreme, but the first purpose of (at least in web) design is to construct an information architecture derived from requirements in each project, not to represent a golden ratio layout. If you have no idea about layout in your webpage, you should learn how may factors are there in your webpage from your client and decide the order of these factors to present for the end users, not to set your layout with any formal proportion at first. Such is not even an amateur design, but BAD one.

The mathematics does not tell us requirements of client nor determine the order of factors, without our substitutions into variables. Yes all these equations in mathematics are good friends, not the law (if it means that we must follow). We can not, and should not follow mere proportions in blind. That’s a death of “design.”