Universal Principles of Design, Updated and Expanded Third Edition

189 Uniform Connectedness

The brain automatically assumes elements connected by lines or boxes are related.

Uniform Connectedness, one of the Gestalt principles of perception, asserts that elements connected to one another by uniform visual properties are perceived as a single group or chunk and are interpreted as being more related than elements that are not connected. For example, a simple matrix composed of dots is perceived as columns when common regions or lines connect the dots vertically and is perceived as rows when common regions or lines connect the dots horizontally.1

There are two basic strategies for applying Uniform Connectedness:

1. Common regions — Formed when edges come together and bound a visual area, grouping the elements ...