Today a little bit about standards in content proportions. Why are they different and that you need to pay attention when creating them, where they will be displayed or published.
Film ratios
Movies are a specific plot of content. Spectators are not interested in the earth or the sky in cinematic productions, therefore the panoramic proportions are created. Cinematic proportions are CinemaScope 2.35: 1 (about 21: 9) and slightly wider than the most popular 16: 9 - 1.85: 1. Ideal for viewing in the cinema or on home-grown equipment with inscriptions in black spaces downstairs.
Other than home recording, it's nowhere near 16: 9, it's now proportions matched to the screens of most of today's mobile and fixed devices, there are no large voids in the content being played, such as the perfect standard and some superiority of the standard. 16: 9 even emphasized Apple's iPhone 5 presentation at the end of 2012, describing it as a perfect for watching movies.
Proportion of photos
The simple thing is that when we take pictures we get graphic files which are not as wide as movies in theaters and close in several standards. Cameras commonly used are 3: 2, 4: 3 or 16: 9 aspect ratios. The first ones, 3: 2, are most often found in digital SLR cameras, and in compact cameras and telephones, they are 4: 3 and 16: 9.
It can be said that this is where the stairs begin. First of all, you will not normally print photos from a 4: 3 or 16: 9 phone without cutting the sides. Why? Standard prints are 15x10cm, which is a 3: 2 lens. It is worth remembering when composing photos intended to land in a family album.
Screen aspect ratio of devices
Even a little bit of time ago, the vast majority of content and screens was in close proportions 4: 3. Series, games, even movies shot with our devices, as well as the devices themselves have been preserved in this standard. Content creation was simpler, and web pages were created "rigidly" because everyone knew where more or less screens would be displayed. Some 10 years ago, the leader positions began to occupy a 16: 9 aspect ratio, initially on televisions to better match the film production screen, then went to the monitors of our computers to finally display on the screens of virtually all phones.
The creators of content, be it apps, games, or websites, had to start working because something started to fall apart. Websites had empty spaces on their sides and games were stretched. Fortunately, with time, productions adapted to the screens of modern devices are being created, in which they are displayed to make the most of the screen space. The content also matched the revered 16: 9 aspect ratio, images and companies framed with the latest devices fit perfectly into their wide screens.
Everything would be perfect, but ...
Currently, there is a tendency to market more, less classic screen proportions, such as the latest LG G6 with 18: 9 aspect ratio and Samsung Galaxy S8 with 18.5: 9 screen. Manufacturers emphasize that the use of such displays is intended to improve work comfort, but I am far from fully in agreement with this thesis, as they become less universal. For example, movies that are already 16: 9 are cut from the top and bottom - not very well. To be fair, a number of modern laptops, such as the Surface Pro 4, are manufactured with 3: 2 dies. You can not forget about ultra wide monitors that reach a ratio of up to 32: 9. These screens, although they can not be denied to improve the comfort of working with certain activities, are highly unvidable and pose problems for developers of games, applications and websites.
So remember to create anything on the Internet that the recipient of our application, film, game or page can have a screen in different proportions. In my opinion, if most devices have screens in 16: 9 aspect ratio - we should stick to them.
Only one more problem remained ...
Horizontal or vertical arrangement?
One of the problems of our time, with which sooner or later we will have to face. Internet traffic generated by mobile devices a year ago was larger than desktop devices (including laptops). It shows the direction in which the world of technology is going and brings many changes. The fact is, there are already solutions like the Bootstrap framework or the Fundation, which with their grid systems rescues web pages from being opposed to being incompatible in any layout, although it does not always do it 100%. However, there is no problem here.
It is about "rigid" content such as pictures or videos.
My dad always told me to take pictures so I did not shoot them vertically, "because there is no way to see it later." He was right - he had, and if you record ... How do you record video messages, for example, using Snapchat? Vertical, because they are displayed in the application. Three or four years ago, as the mantra repeated to my friends to shoot horizontally, it's obvious - it's the way movies are played. Today the situation has changed dramatically and we are more and more often displaying the files we have recorded, just on the phones, for example by showing friends. So my solid argument to shoot horizontally ... is not to be reasonable and to be no different, you have to start thinking about how to shoot or take photos so that the recipient does not have to exercise too much.
Perfect proportions
I do not want to start a story from the beginning of the history of photography, but in a way, colorful pictures that we can immediately show our friends in the minds of many came to Polaroid. This idea after years instigram picked up and started again the fashion of ... square pictures. You may disagree with some of the issues, but the square makes sense - this is a universal solution.
If the content is square, it does not matter if the device we are displaying is a phone or a TV. Think about it, before you create your websites, ads, photos or videos.
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