Designer vs Developer #17: Designing with the Gestalt principles

Here Google Design Advocate Mustafa Kurtuldu discusses the Gestalt theory and how some of its principles can be applied to digital design

The stars on the left is seen as a square but the stars on the right look like columns

Designer vs Developer by Google Design Advocate Mustafa Kurtuldu is a series of videos aimed at improving understanding foster greater understanding between the two camps. Each video, in which Kurtuldu has a conversation with a different industry expert, is accompanied by an essay which delves deeper into the topic discussed.

The Gestalt principles are a series of laws that are used to explain why human beings naturally find organized patterns in objects they see around them. The goal with the principles was to explain why we group objects in some ways but not others.

There are many different principles, but here I am going to look at the ones that effect grouping, these are; proximity, similarity, common fate, continuity, closure, and prägnanz.