Reviewing Gestalt principles of visual perception

Gestalt means an organized whole or form. This set of principles was developed by German psychologists in the 1920s to describe how humans perceive and interpret the world around them visually. These principles have since become the foundation for all design work—ranging from websites, logos, e-learning platforms, maps, advertisements, and more, to data visualizations. The following screenshot lists the key Gestalt principles that help design data visualizations that make the most intuitive sense:

Figure 2.7 – Gestalt principles of visual perception

We will review each of these principles and how they can be applied to data visualizations, in the rest of this section.

Proximity

The principle of proximity posits that we tend to perceive elements that are placed close to each other as belonging to a single group. In the following screenshot, we can see three groups of circles based on the relative...