Leveraging the Gestalt Principles for Content Strategy

As humans, we have an innate desire to find order in disorder. To calm the chaos. In fact, our mind goes as far as to inform the eye what it is seeing by forming patterns. In the 1920’s. three German psychologists studied how people gain meaningful perceptions from their chaotic surroundings. We now call their findings the Gestalt Principles.

The graphic design industry still adheres to these principles today. They help make the pieces of the whole come together more naturally. As such, Gestalt is German for “unified whole.” Furthermore, the Gestalt principles help quickly elevate confusing designs to seamless, natural interactions for the reader. I’m going to highlight a few of these principles relating directly to presentation work.

The Principle of Continuity
This is a simple visual cue to your reader that makes a meaningful impact. The principle of continuity states that elements that are arranged on a line or a curve are perceived to be more related than elements not on that line or curve.

For example, when you are looking at a slide, often you must differentiate whether you should be reading top-to-bottom or left-to-right. In the case of a timeline, you see groupings held together by a common line, so your brain knows to read left-to-right. Understanding the power of instinct helps guide your design choices. Knowing that a simple line or curve can help connect the dots for your readers could easily convert a confusing, cluttered slide into an impactful story.

The Principle of Similarity
Color, shape and size are discerned by the eye as similar regardless of proximity. This means that having themes within your deck that follow a certain color, shape, or size helps out your audience. They will naturally see themes.

Let’s go through an example. Let’s say you’re doing a branding deck and you want to show that your company is bold, determined, and compassionate. You then choose colors that will follow those themes throughout your entire deck. Say you use black for boldness. Your audience should recognize a black theme every time you are referring to the bolder side of your brand. Then you could use maybe red for compassionate, and gold for determined. These visual cues will help your audience, even subconsciously, connect the statements to your themes. This creates a stronger, more relatable deck overall.

I encourage you to dive deeper into the findings that resulted in the Gestalt Principles. A quick Google image search will provide you with lots of simple visual examples. Understanding the ways the brain creates categories and connects dots will not only help you clean up a cluttered deck, it could help your audience connect more deeply to your presentation. The Gestalt Principles can also be a great jumping-off point if you are having a hard time finding where to begin with your deck. Another great resource for a jumping off point is our content team here at Ethos3. We would love to take a look at what you have and partner with you from beginning to end on your deck. Get in touch today!