Van de Graaf / Tschichold Page Construction Canon

Topic:
Geometry
This is the Van de Graaf page construction canon, as popularized by the designer Jan Tschichold. Here it is applied to A4 paper. For a right-hand page, the margins are given by:
  • left - EO
  • top - OI
  • right - KP
  • bottom - KQ
While this is a very pleasing construction, the resulting proportions aren't very complicated. For all margins, the smaller is of the dimension, the larger is .
To adjust the margins for other page sizes, change the coordinates:
  1. A is (0, Page Height)
  2. B is (2 × Page Width, Page Height)
  3. C is (2 × Page Width, 0)
  4. D is (0,0)