How the Rule of Thirds Improved My UI Design

In Steve Jobs’ famous “connecting the dots” speech at Stanford, he shared how a calligraphy class — something most people would dismiss as useless — ended up shaping how he designed Macintosh fonts. Without that class, we might have been stuck with ugly GUIs with monospace fonts.

This happened to me recently.

While designing the empty state UI for Spell Parrot, I placed the image at the center of the empty space. But something felt off aesthetically.

Then I recalled the rule of thirds — a basic photography tip I learned almost 20 years ago. Instead of dead center, I positioned the mascot’s eye at the 1/3 line and the button at the 2/3 line. It looks better.

Curious, I researched the application of the rule of thirds in UI design. Turns out, it’s actually a widely used technique in the design world too.

Do you think dead center or the new position looks better? What unexpected skill from your past has helped you recently?