Gestalt Principles

Gestalt: An organized whole perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
Closure: The mind completes missing parts of an image.
Requires enough present pieces to fill the gaps.
Continuity/Continuation: The eye follows a direction in a visual field until it meets a new object.
Similarity: Grouping objects of similar shape or color as part of the same form.
Shared characteristics create relationships.
Designers use similarity to organize information.
Designers violate similarity to draw attention, creating an anomaly.
Proximity: Tendency to group points or objects close to each other relative to less proximate ones.
Overlapping objects have strong proximity.
Figure & Ground: The figure is what you perceive, and the ground is the background.
Only one can be perceived at a time, creating an illusion of depth (positive and negative space).
Text is considered a figure.