Gestalt theory is something with which all people are innately familiar, but are unaware of its rules and principles. I, myself, have known about the theories and principles for several years, but have not explored them in depth until the last couple months.
Gestalt has many definitions depending on the context in which it is used. Official definitions from sources such as the Merriam-Webster dictionary state that gestalt is “a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts”. Though this definition is obviously wordy and a bit formal for my purposes, it does describe the general theory gestalt well. The online Free Dictionary extracts gestalt from the Collins English Dictionary and describes it from a psychological standpoint as “a perceptual pattern or structure possessing qualities as a whole that cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts”. The two above definitions work well for gestalt in general, but, because I am delving into a design-related field, I find that the design-related definition of gestalt from usask.com, “how we perceive objects in our environment… the difference between figure and ground and…how various principles help us to decide which is figure and which is ground” applies most closely to how I think of it. No matter what source is though, they all essentially describe gestalt in the same way. Combining the definitions into a more digestible form, my definition of gestalt is that, by our way of interpreting, the whole of anything is more than the sum of all it’s combined parts.
From how I understand gestalt, I have illustrated a simple example of a couple of the principles below.
Girl and trees
In my above illustration, the girl on the rock expresses the gestalt principle of figure and ground since she is not visible by any other means than the night sky behind her. The constellation of Orion, seen in the sky, shows the gestalt principle of proximity because of the closeness of the stars in Orion’s belt and because the configuration of the overall constellation is easily recognized by most viewers. The trees illustrate both the principles of proximity and similarity – proximity because the black trees are all spaced close together and, therefore, seen as more of a whole group than the white tree, and similarity because all the black trees are together, but the white tree is separate and, thus, more noticeable.
Sources:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gestalt
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/gestalt
http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework/skaalid/theory/theory.htm
