New Twitter Design Based on the Golden Ratio

From Pythagoras to Darren Aronofsky, the Golden Ratio — an irrational mathematical constant found in everything from art to architecture — has come pretty far. Lately, it was apparently the basis of the design for the new Twitter.

Check out the above picture from Twitter’s Creative Director Doug Bowman, found on Twitter’s Flickr page. According to the caption: “To anyone curious about #NewTwitter proportions, know that we didn’t leave those ratios to chance. This, of course, only applies to the narrowest version of the UI. If your browser window is wider, your details pane will expand to provide greater utility, throwing off these proportions. But the narrowest width shows where we started, ratio-wise.”

Personally, I think the inclusion of the mind-bending and mythical ratio is rather elegant (but then I have a weird obsession with hypertexts like Fibonacci’s Daughter). What do you think of the new Twitter design?