The principle of closure refers to people’s tendency to fill in the blanks and complete an object whenever it matches an external object. As shown below, eyes tend to perceive 4 circles and 1 square in the image below:
The principle of closure is used in different areas such as designing logos, interface icons, etc. Some of the applications are discussed below:
In many company logos, the alphabets are written incomplete, but eyes perceive them as complete through the principle of closure. The same applies to shapes in logos. A few examples are shown below:
The principle of closure allows icons to be made in a minimalistic manner so they do not burden the eyes, but the users perceive and understand them. As shown below, Google slides uses the principle of closure to make minimalist icons. The icon shows a circle overlaid on an object that the mind perceives as a square. Despite the incomplete shape, the user can easily fill in the blanks.
Designers use the principle of closure to indicate that additional content exists and to encourage interaction with content. Carousel designs use the principle of closure to only partially show the next card, which conveys to the user that there is more content since there are more cards present, as shown below:
However, care should be taken to use the principle in a way that successfully indicates the design one wants to convey. The following examples show how the principle is used poorly and thus does not convey the intended design. The dashes in the circle are too far apart, so they do not exactly convey a circle, and the additional content card is shown very slightly, so it does not signal additional content well in the picture on the right:
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