Use of Closure in Design

This is one of my favourite principles that influences my graphical designs, it is described as the tendency of peoples mind to perceive a collection of individual objects as a single, recognisable pattern. This is caused by the subconscious mind which fills in the blanks between the graphics.

A simple example to show that this principle is very relevant can be found using your keyboard.

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by using the dash key your can see that the mind processes the single dashes into a long line. Another form of evidence is text messages as most of us shorten words missing out letters in order to narrow the length of the message. When we read texts our mind fills in any missing letters allowing us to read the message clearly with understanding. An example of this is below.

Hello, hw was ur dy? did u hav fun thgh u wer cold.

This principle is fantastic for creating simple logos that can be used on posters or advertisements. The most recent example of closure being used can be seen in the campaign and design of the logo badge for the new Alfa Romeo Mito as shown in the link.

http://www.alfaromeo.co.uk/uk/cmsen/models/mito/Pages/mito-landing.aspx?outputXml=true&CustomResponse=WebCrawler

Alfa have proved that by using the closure principle you can come up with an unusual yet cool logo design that in my opinion stands out from the crowd making your design more noticeable, making it perfect for advertising.

Closure is also useful in the design of web pages as you can use a set of images pieced together to animate a product or online advert. Software such as Adobe Photoshop can be used to import a set of still photographs into an animator included with the software, these stills can then be modified and used to create a virtual animated flick book. These animations are simple and reduce memory usage compared to normal mpeg videos as they only use a minimal number of slides which your mind then merges together to complete the animation. an example of this can be found on Youtube.com.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYONNDwcvEA

Looking back at the critical essay I have not changed my opinion on closure, I still feel it will influence my graphical work and believe it's a modern looking form of graphics that will become more popular with companies as time passes.