Utilising the Gestalt principles can make designs more coherent, connected or unified – this guide explains how.
In the 1920s a group of psychologists in Germany developed a series of theories of visual perception, describing how viewers group together different objects into groups or a single coherent whole when the separate elements are arranged together in a particular way. The prominent founders of the collection of theories and principles are Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Kohler, and Kurt Koffka.
The term Gestalt means ‘unified whole’, which is a good way of describing the over-arching theme behind the principles: if you collect together your design elements in an arrangement using one of the approaches, your design will feel more connected, coherent and complete.
]]>
Rudolf Arnheim
These principles were developed over a number of years, but came to prominence in part thanks to Rudolf Arnheim’s 1954 book, Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (ISBN: 978-0-520-02161-7) which has become one of the must-have art books of the 20th century, and regularly features on university course text lists. While it’s well worth reading Arnheim’s book, to summarise there are six common, basic Gestalt Principles:- Similarity
- Continuation
- Closure
- Proximity
- Figure/Ground
- Symmetry and order