Well, remember that we’re dealing with the unique combination of the human eye and brain. “How can it contradict laws?” you might ask. This grouping effect works even when it contradicts other Gestalt principles, such as proximity and similarity. The law of unified connectedness states that elements that are connected to each other using colors, lines, frames, or other shapes are perceived as a single unit when compared with other elements that are not linked in the same manner. What Is the Law of Unified Connectedness? All done? Good job! Now, turn away for a moment and then look back at your page.ĭo you see how, although the four groups are sorted or clustered together, the design as a whole is a very busy affair? We can see that looking at this is actually something like work! Making our users work is not what we want. Okay, let’s put in some squares now – about the same number in the same amount of space, keeping them close to each other.įor our grand finale, let’s insert some rectangles, maybe 4-5, increasing the size a bit so they’re noticeably different from the squares. Again, leave room so that there’s still half a page that is blank. Now, let’s add the same number of triangles, just a little way away from the circles (so that the distance between the two groups is about 3-4 times the distance between each circle). If you’ve got a pencil and paper handy, try this: draw 8-10 circles (at scribble speed – there’s no need to spend time on neatness and geometric perfection!), anywhere on the page, using up about a quarter of the total space, but keep them together. The proximity of each item will become so indistinct that your design will lose meaning. Why? If you group too many items too closely, you’re going to end up with a noisy, crowded layout. However, as designers, we need to be careful about employing the law in our designs. – it’s ideal for us to be able to recognize different clusters of items at a glance. The law of proximity is very useful for allowing people to group ideas, concepts, etc. The rule is this: if you change the subject, you’ll need to start a new paragraph. Unless it’s a telephone directory, you’ll notice how the author has (hopefully!) made sensible use of paragraphs to keep text about similar ideas, points, or threads of arguments together. Pick up any book near you and flick through it. The spacing between blocks of text tells us how likely they are to be related to each other. This is also true for paragraph spacing and for more disparate elements of text on a web page. In written material, the law of proximity enables us to make sense of text as a whole. The law of proximity allows us to use whitespace, for example, to build perceived relationships between different elements. Elements that are close to each other are perceived to be related when compared with elements that are separate from each other. The law of proximity describes how the human eye perceives connections between visual elements. For now, let’s stay near proximity, which (literally!) means closeness in space, time, or relationship. There will be a third article to cover the Laws of Figure/Ground, Prägnanz, Closure, and Common Fate. This article is a follow-up to the first Gestalt principles article, in which we introduced and discussed the Law of Similarity. The laws that apply are those of proximity, uniform connectedness, and continuation. These are influenced by the way in which elements in a design are laid out. Our brains build connections between disparate design elements based on laws of visual perception. “The eye tends to build a relationship between elements of the same design,” is a crucial saying to keep in mind. Of course, connecting is also important to us – that’s what we want to make happen between our users and our designs! This one is especially useful as it deals with how our eyes and brains draw connections with design images. In this, the second part of our examining Gestalt principles, we’ll look at another Law – the Law of Proximity.
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