Gestalt psychology promised to understand the perceptual regularities that emerge from the relation between elements.

Throughout the 1920s and 30s, Gestalt psychologists formulated a number of principles or laws that describe the natural tendencies of the human perceptual system (e.g., Koffka, 1922). These principles are still in use today and have become a regular staple of design courses and guidelines for marketing or data visualization used in business and science.

Take a few minutes to learn about some of these principles here.

Magicians will often rely on Gestalt principles to deceive us – as is the case in the cut rope trick (Barnhart, 2010). The principle of continuity adopted by our perceptual system leads us to expect that similarly oriented groups or lines are associated if they are aligned with each other.
(Author’s own work)

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References

Barnhart, A. S. (2010). The exploitation of Gestalt principles by magicians. Perception, 39(9), 1286–1289. http://doi.org/10.1068/p6766

Todorovic, D. (2008). “Gestalt principles”. Scholarpedia, 3(12), 5345. https://doi.org/10.4249%2Fscholarpedia.5345

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