WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT THEN?

The principles of Gestalt refer to a series of sensory perception rules that help us to make sense of the world around us, understand what we encounter, but more than this, be able to read between the lines, draw conclusions and help us avoid walking into walls. In the case of design, it is employed to help us engage with an object, media, language or environment put in front of us. It helps to convey meaning, positive/negative association and make inferences on extremely subtle levels. My aim here is to illustrate these principles by analysing branding and visual identity in east asian culture; in particular signage, where, as will hopefully be made clear, there is a definite flavour and a particular set of cultural circumstances that conspire to create it.

“If we move up the levels of perception, we can move inside to “the theater of our mind” and notice what and how we represent things that we have neurologically picked up via our sense receptors and seemingly present them to ourselves again... This facsimile of the world that we re-present inside our “mind” (our mental processing) provides us the “languages of the mind” by which we can “run our own brain” and ... in that way we induce ourselves into mind-body-emotion states.”

(Hall, L.M. 2010)

How we see and how we understand what we see is not built on an innate understanding of all images, events, scenes, objects, circumstances. We are not born unto the world with this knowledge, rather, how we perceive, or process information, is based on a kind of rapid-fire deductive reasoning. Johan Goethe and Emanuel Kant, among other esteemed thinkers in our recent history, talked of the process by which we come to reading our environments and interpreting information, but it was Christian von Ehrenfels who gave us a clearly defined set of principles, die Gestalt, through which to describe this. How, when we gaze upon, particularly visual form, we have the capacity to gather together composite elements and are able to draw conclusions from them - generate a complete whole. Our sensory understanding is built on these principles. These principles not only allow us to communicate ideas through literal, representational meaning, but also on a more subtle, elegant and playful level. This works on a visual plane, but through it we can describe and convey quite complex ideas and emotions as well. In the following text I hope to introduce how this understanding of the Gestalt principles provides an invaluable tool for designers and communicators to challenge and engage intended audiences by relying on the core perceptive abilities of the human mind. 

First up, a little introduction of how vision works, as this is essential to the wider connections I hope to make on how we associate stimuli on an emotional level that in turn triggers response or action. As titled, I have selected a rather unusual case study to demonstrate this. Later on I will be referring back to this in analysing aspects of east asian culture and through this frame, discussing sensitivity to graphic form, cultural factors that affect taste and desirability - the so-called ‘Cult of Cute’, and how this is manifested in graphic design iconography, typography and branding. 

READ BETWEEN THE LINES 

Speaking to the purely form-based application, when we are presented with a graphic image, symbol, logo, icon, whether it be a linguistic character, figurative or abstract form, our ability to recognise is based on one or more of the following Gestalt principles: 

* Similarity dictates that if an item we are presented with resembles something we already know, we will apply that preinstalled sense of what something ‘looks like’ on top of this new item. 
* If we come across a series of separate(d) items, we can draw a conclusion that they are related to one another, this is pattern recognition and draws on senses of unity and proximity. Related to this is spotting anomalies or breaks from a pattern. 
* If we come across an incomplete item we can fill in the blanks, this relies on closure and common fate. 
* Similarly we are able to follow a suggested visual path across a plane if we have been provided with at least the beginnings of a line, real or implied - this is the principle of continuity. 

Based on these visual abilities we can interpret visual input. But does this work? 

How vision works is important to us. Without getting too bogged down in the bio-mechanics of it, I will try to summarise the process. Information enters the eye in the form of light as reflected off surfaces. The back of the eye does a little filing of RGB in its rods and photoreceptors, among other things, then the signals are fired off down the optic nerve, on into the visual cortices. This is where it gets really interesting; where depth perception and form are ‘triangulated’ between V1 and V2 (there are 4 visual cortices, V1-4), but most useful for us here is that in fact what we see is not so much continuous motion but an editing together of frames or snapshots of the outside world. What is allowing us to see smoothly as we cast our gaze around relies on a back catalogue of recognition of forms and objects; this goes down in V3/V4. 

Our visual sense of the world is entirely based on assumptions we can make from images we already possess (a collection we obviously continue to build on throughout our lives). We recognise an edge/line and basically assume or accept its logical continuation and then any changes or anomalies because we’ve seen it all before essentially (not exactly the same scene and arrangement of course, but similarities are there and conclusions can be drawn). This is what allows us to keep from tripping over an uneven paving stone or walking off the edge of a tall building, or similar mishaps... 

Of course this process of perception can be explained through Gestalt theory. ALL our minds have selforganising tendencies, coupled with making sense of the world around us based on a catalogue of visual memories, it is pretty clear how easy we find it to complete partial images (closure), recognise pattern (similarity), follow implied lines (continuity) and so on. A step further, it can also explain how other stimuli is perceived and processed in the mind; taking associative inferences from the written and spoken word, colour, music and all other forms of sensory stimuli as well. In other words, Gestalt refers to intellectual reasoning as much as it does to a visual comprehension of the physical world before our eyes. From a creative point of view, a good grasp of these principles allows us not only to express form in a visual way, but also for very subtle, suggestive communication on many levels. Based on past experience, informed by cultural, social and environmental norms, we can all interpret visual cues and relate to meaning inferred through language, text and subtext by association and recall.