Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated

Closure

A tendency to perceive a set of individual elements as a single, recognizable pattern, rather than multiple, individual elements.

The principle of closure is one of a number of principles referred to as Gestalt principles of perception. It states that whenever possible, people tend to perceive a set of individual elements as a single, recognizable pattern, rather than multiple, individual elements. The tendency to perceive a single pattern is so strong that people will close gaps and fill in missing information to complete the pattern if necessary. For example, when individual line segments are positioned along a circular path, they are first perceived holistically as a circle, and then as comprising multiple, independent elements. The ...