At the core of Gestalt theory is an understanding that people see the world in very similar ways. By applying these similarities, we can understand how people make sense of what they see. Gestalt principles provide ‘rules’ about how we recognize patterns in our environment. They describe how the brain works, and help us to understand why we see things the way we do. These rules are shortcuts the brain takes to understand large amounts of information quickly.
The concept of Prägnanz – meaning ‘concision’ or ‘simplicity’ – encapsulates the principle that underlies these laws. We perceive objects in a way that makes them appear as concise as possible. The Olympic Games logo, for instance, immediately reveals itself to be made up of five rings instead of a collection of complicated shapes. From this general rule, others can be derived: the law of similarity says that we group things that are similar to each other; the principle of proximity states that we group things that happen near each other; the law for continuity says that we perceive things in smooth, continuous lines as being part of a single entity; and the law of closeness means that we fill in any gaps in our knowledge by assuming that something must be connected to something else.
