2. Visual perception and Gestalt principles

Trace how size, value, color, orientation, and placement can make one element pop out before conscious reading begins. Use visual salience to predict the first thing a viewer is likely to notice.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Recognize how objects that sit near each other are perceived as belonging together. Compare small spacing changes to see when separate items become a group, a list, or a confusing cluster.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Recognize how shared color, shape, size, type style, or texture can make separate items feel related. Practice deciding whether similarity is helping a viewer compare items or accidentally grouping the wrong things.

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Use boxes, backgrounds, rules, and visible links to make items feel like a unit. Compare common region and connectedness as stronger grouping cues than mere nearness in many layouts.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Identify which part of an image reads as the subject and which part recedes as background. Work through figure-ground reversals, negative space, and low-contrast cases where the viewer may not know what to look at.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Use differences in value, size, shape, weight, or texture to separate elements and create emphasis. Judge when contrast clarifies structure and when too many competing contrasts make a layout noisy.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

See how the eye tends to follow smooth lines, edges, curves, and aligned paths. Trace implied routes through a design and find breaks that interrupt reading or make separate elements feel connected.

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Recognize how the mind completes missing parts of a shape, letter, or image when enough cues are present. Test when closure creates a clever, readable form and when missing information becomes too vague.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Use common fate to group elements that move, change, or behave together in screen-based design. Compare static grouping cues with motion cues in menus, transitions, carousels, and animated icons.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Reason through cases where proximity, similarity, contrast, and figure-ground cues point in different directions. Decide which perceptual cue is likely to dominate and how to adjust the design so the intended grouping wins.

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Use what you learned in the previous lesson to solve real-world problems.

Review this chapter with practice based on your mistakes.