The aim of this work is to get acquinted with the law of continuation. A Gestalt principle of organization holding that there is an innate tendency to perceive a line as continuing its established direction. So in this work I would attempt to get better knowledge about this principle of psichology. What is the law of continuation? The law of continuation is one of four visual perception laws as theorized by gestalt psychologists.
Paul Martin Lester, the author of Visual Communication, an expert in the field wrote: “The law of continuation rests on the principle, again assumed by Gestalt psychologists, that the brain does not prefer sudden or unusual changes in the movement of a line. In other words, the brain seeks as much as possible a smooth continuation of a line. ” Our brains try to organize information and make meaningful order from what we see. We have an innate need to create order in our lives (even though we are capable of creating disorder).
Interior designers and graphic designers organize objects and information for aesthetic appeal with the law of continuation in mind. Actually, all of us, whether intuitively or consciously, organize objects and information on a daily basis. When graphic designers are laying out advertisements, posters, or even business cards, they lay out the information and graphics in such a way that readers follow the lines of the layout. The goal is to create visual organization to help the reader progress through the information in a predictable way.
This gives readers a sense of ease as they digest the information in a positive way. When professional musicians organize their musical expressions without breaking the rhythm, they too, conform to the law of continuation. Continuing, recurring, and developing patterns not only occur musically, but law of continuation occurs all around us. The clock ticks, ticks, and ticks without end. The coastal waves rise and fall without let up. When it rains or snows, the fall of the droplets or snowflakes predictably spiral downward.
As you can imagine, the law of continuation can be seen in a candid photograph when a person or a group of people are walking (rhythmically) together in the same direction. Not only this, but if we see trees in an orchard, we quickly notice the lines or a grid of lines. This too, describes what the law of continuation is. Therefore, when we see identical objects such as trees or houses, we organize the objects as visual lines? even though the lines are curved or break. With the law of continuation, we know and assume the continuation and wholeness of objects even though we can’t see all of it.
We realize that things overlap and diffuse with distance. We know it’s there even though we can’t see it. We know the sound of the ocean continues even though we’re not there to actually hear it or smell it. This too, is the law of continuation. No doubt about it, we have an innate desire to organize our world. In knowing and understanding this concept, we consciously know how to improve our aesthetic world whether it is our personal appearance, living space, yards, designs, music, and presentations.
The law of continuation is how we visually organize our thoughts, surroundings, and all artistic endeavors. Principles of good continuation The Gestalt principle of “good continuation” says that elements arranged in a straight line or smooth curve are perceived as a group, and are interpreted as being more related than elements not on the line or curve. In addition, visual patterns with good continuation may suggest to the viewer that the pattern continues beyond the end of the pattern itself. That is, we mentally “fill in” or “paint in” the rest of the pattern.
Good continuation is important in the design of tables, especially in the alignment of columns. Readers should not look down a column to see the good continuation broken by a rule line that is intended to frame a subheading. Inexperienced document designers sometimes position subheadings in a centered position over the columns and then bound the subheads with horizontal rule lines above and below them. When designed in this way, the horizontal lines may interfere with the reader’s ability to connect the column headings with the data.
In effect, this strategy carves up the content into parts which are marked by the rule lines. Unless the content of the columns changes from one section to the next, horizontal cues should not compete with vertical ones. To avoid this problem, subheadings should appear in the left-most column of the table as side headings. Document designers can conclude that unless they want to signal a rhetorically distinct text element, it is a good idea to maintain good continuation.
Sometimes the law of continuity gives us the mistaken impression that lines continue when they do not. Not only is the diagonal rectangle in the left hand side of the figure below not continuous, the two diagonal rectangles (as can be seen in the figure to the right) do not even align. For example, when looking at the illustration below, most viewers will perceive a straight line (12345) intersecting a waveform line (ABCD).
Very few, if any, viewers perceive a series of short lines (1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5) intersected by several curves. So Gestalt principle of good continuation is the most often exploited perceptual tendency in magic. Take the most well-known of all stage illusions, cutting a woman in half. It would not be an effective illusion if audience’s didn’t fill in the space between the assistant’s head poking out of one end of the box and her feet poking out the other. Often times, magicians will facilitate this filling in process by painting a representation of the assistant’s body on the outside of the box.
In actuality, the woman’s body is much like the sticks pictured above. The illusion works because your filled-in perception of the location of her body does not jive with the actual orientation of her body. This is just one of many instances of good continuation in magic. Good continuation for design The principle of good continuation advises us on effective ways to indicate relatedness. Good continuation is especially useful for allowing us to penetrate and understand meaning as indicated by all sorts of visual structures.
