The Gestalt Principles

So in one of my previous design assignments I stated that single colour logos are more pleasing to the eye. Whilst this in it's self isn't really incorrect, my mistake was in failing to state why I know this to be true, after-all it's been some time since I studied art and design at college.

Now as well as the standard rules of composition and golden ratios etc that I forgot to mention in relation to  simple logos, I recently came across another part of the answer that lies in psychology.

Enter The Gestalt Principles.

Gestalt is German for 'unified whole' and was the name given to theories of visual perception developed in the 1920s.

It covers various principles that when followed allows people to perceive individual elements as 'unified wholes'.

These are 'similarity' , 'continuation', 'closure' , 'proximity', and 'figure and ground'.