W4-5 – LA – Gestalt Principles

Strategic Design 1 – Module 1 – W4-5 – Create a Logo Using Gestalt Principles – Learning Activity

• Look at the following logo and consider the shape, form, simplicity of design and the way it communicates.
  In your own words explain what you consider the different Gestalt principles in this logo to be. Describe the logo and justify your answers.  
• Pick any 3 Gestalt principles and recreate 3 versions of the logo according to your chosen principle. Be creative and innovative with how you do it. Sketch, plan, and do it by hand before digitally creating your favourite option in a vector format.
• Your entire process, including sketches and research, need to be loaded on your blog as part of this learning activity.

The logo:
The Unilever logo consists of various small shapes that create the U. The shapes seem to be, for the most part, nature themed, with shapes like palm trees, birds, flowers, snowflakes, plants, etc.
The Gestalt principle that is evident in the logo is proximity. The small shapes are grouped together to create a bigger shape, being the U. We can also see elements of the closure principle present; the small shapes that make up the U are blue shapes grouped together with space in between them, so our mind is filling in the blanks and recognising the pattern as the letter U.

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Sources:

UserTesting, “7 Gestalt principles of visual perception: cognitive psychology for UX” https://www.usertesting.com/blog/gestalt-principles/ (April 10, 2019).