How To Really Use The Superellipse For Elegant Designs

If you are into design, elegance, and beauty, you need this!

Sergels Torg in Stockholm City (Image from WikiCC — further edited by the author)

The term “Superellipse” is not a common occurrence in our day-to-day lives. “Straight lines” and “curves”, on the other hand, are much more common. If you think about it, we write on paper that has straight lines as edges using pens that have curved surfaces as writing tips. We play football with balls that have circular cross-sections on rectangular pitches. We live in buildings that have straight contours and look through rectangular windows at the circular moon. I could keep going, but you get the picture.

We perceive the world with a distinction between straight lines and curves. What is interesting about our experience is the fact that we perceive the marriage of straight lines and curves as “beauty”. And beauty is a word that goes hand-in-hand with the word “design”.

Where does the superellipse fit into all of this? Before we can answer that question, we need to dive into the mathematics and geometry of Lamé curves.

What is a Lamé Curve?

A French mathematician named Gabriel Lamé discovered a unique set of closed curves in the 19th century. These family of curves were named after him and they take the following mathematical form in…