Gestalt is a German term denoting the psychological ability of the human mind to form a "whole" picture out of fragments. Often this is philosophically abstracted as being able to form order from chaos, as Gestalt as a concept encompasses far more than just visual perception alone. For our purposes though, Gestalt psychology, initiated at the Berlin School of Experimental Psychology in the 1920s, resulted in a series of observations about how people reason forms and figures from the visual stimulus they see that is still in use today. It provides a framework for Designers dealing in the visual domain to understand how their audience will interpret a composition as well as giving Designers a vocabulary with which to articulate good Design rationale. Gestalt theory is comprised of four high-level Principles of perception and ten Laws of grouping;
The four Gestalt Principles of perception are;
The ten Gestalt Laws of grouping are;
We will investigate each in turn over the next 15 slides...
Note: the number and naming of the Gestalt Laws varies across sources due to no singular authoritative source to maintain their integrity across publications and domains. What is Regularity/rhythm in our set is "Parrallelness" in others, etc. Though the Principles remain largely intact.