Scale Tipping the Scale in your Favor No, not that scale! Let’s take a look at Scale as a design principle. Scale refers to how the size of a design relates to the area in which it is placed. In floral design, scale refers to the relationship between the physical dimensions of a composition compared to its immediate surroundings. If your arrangement is not in scale with its setting, it can appear out of place. We tend to judge the size of objects by our own experience based on human proportion. For example, if a photo shows a child playing with a kitten, and the photograph shows the child is bigger than the kitten, that size relationship between the two is familiar, and what we experience in real life; both seem to be in harmony. Technically speaking, scale is a kind of proportion, but it only applies to the size, area,
or venue surrounding the design. Because we know the size of an object such as the Ikea 9-inch wooden artist model, we can objectively look at the floral arrangement and know it is in scale with the model. In the photo above, we know the size of a Sharpie is 5 inches, and know that it is not in scale with the area in which it has been placed. The same concept in reverse is true for the giant cup. Basically, a single object has no scale until it is seen in comparison with its location.
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BY DESIGN
In floral design, we tend to experience scale by comparing the designs size to the size of the space in which the design is placed. In the photograph below, an outdoor floral display by Tetsunori Kawana appears smaller because it is in a larger area. Compare a similar display (left) in a large indoor space with humans in the background for reference, and you have a better concept of the massive size of both exhibits.