Gestalt applied to web design (Part 4): principle of good continuity or principle of alignment
February 25, 2008 2 comments
In the fourth article of the series, talk about an important principle of Gestalt: the principle of good continuity or principle of alignment.
This article is part of the series "Gestalt applied to web design." Check out the list of all the parties so far:
- Gestalt applied to web design (part 1): origin of the term, meaning and utility;
- Gestalt applied to web design (Part 2): the proximity principle;
- Gestalt applied to web design (Part 3): web examples of the proximity principle.
- Gestalt applied to web design (Part 4): principle of good continuity or principle of alignment (Article current).
Generally people are beginning to tinker with web design, tends to put the visual elements of composition so much that one at random, trying to fill any blank space to appear. The saddest is that we do, generally, disregarding the other constituent elements. When the site is opened, visitors see that there is something wrong (although unable to say, exactly, what).
Actually, what happens is that the web designer does not pay attention to one important principle of Gestalt: the principle of good continuity or principle of alignment.
The principle of alignment (like most of that classification), each constituent element of a layout should have a visual connection with another element. I mean, nothing should be done / placed arbitrarily, without taking into consideration the entire composition. That "connection" may be aligning the elements that need to pass the idea that they are linked. Even being distant from each other, these elements, if properly aligned, forward the idea of "relationship".
When the elements of a design are inter-related, who looks understand, intuitively (or unconsciously, is preferable) that it is a more cohesive, stronger, more organized! Applying the law of proximity, can indicate which items are coming interconnected, through the principle of alignment, we can state that far maintained a relationship, to say, are part of the "transmission" (of ideas, concepts, feelings, etc.).
In the next article on the serious Gestalt: examples of the principle applied to the alignment of web design.














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