Pixels to Print: Illusions in Design
January 16, 2020
In some rare yet fascinating occurrences, when strategic
design is combined with a confused and deceived perceptual system, something
called an illusion is born.
Many of you may be thinking of the most famous goblet
illusion, where in one second your brain processes the silhouette of a white goblet
on a black background, but when looking back in the next second you instead see
two black silhouetted faces facing each other on a white background . This is
just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what our brains can perceive. Why does this happen, though? Before I go into an in-depth blog post on the
functionality of the brain when perceiving illusions, I’ll instead give you a
quick recap, along with some of the most common examples of illusions in design
that we come across more often than we think.
Illusions in the simplest of forms are when what we
actually see with our own eyes clashes with what our brain is making us think we’re
seeing. Our brain is perceiving an image
in a way that differs from objective reality in an attempt to make sense of the
world around us. Essentially, our brains are constantly tricking us into seeing
things that are not really there. Crazy, right?!
Here are just a few examples of illusions that can occur in
the world of design:
1) Hermann Grid Illusion
What color do you see at the intersecting dots – white or black? Or both? While the dots are actually all white, our brain perceives them as black when we look at them with our peripheral vision because of something called lateral inhibition, which is a result of the differing amount of light falling on the smaller and larger receptive fields of the background and dots.
Keep in mind the Hermann Grid illusion when designing a
grid for your website or collateral!
2) Jastrow Illusion
Which shape is longer, number 1 or 2?
Trick question!! They are indeed the SAME size! Don’t
believe me? Measure it out yourself, and you will see that when placed on top
of each other, these two shapes are identical.
This illusion typically occurs with curved objects, such as these two,
that are aligned vertically, leading to the illusion of the bottom shape
appearing longer!
3) Muller-Lyer Illusion
If you have noticed this illusion before, you are one of
very few. When crafting a font,
typographers almost always rely more heavily on what looks good rather logical
thinking when it comes to character sizes.
When each character is created to the same height, the overall word will
look disproportionate, as you can see in these two commonly known logos
above. Instead, typographers and
designers use the process of “overshooting” to resize individual characters to
achieve a balance in type that is the most visually pleasing. Chances are you haven’t noticed the
difference in size of the characters, though, as your brain has successfully
tricked you into thinking that they looked the same!
4) Illusion of Motion
Stare at these images for long enough and the shapes will start moving! Why does this happen? The operating principle here is called apparent motion. It happens because there's so much geometric repetition and other data impacting varying portions of our retina all at once that our brain is fooled into believing there is movement!
Illusory
movement is a great way to engage your audience in both a physical and mental
way, grabbing their attention in no time!
5) Simultaneous Contrast Illusion
At first glance, the inner rectangle on the right looks
like it is a darker shade of purple than that on the left, right? However, if you move them next to each other,
you will see that they are actually the same color! Placing two objects of the
same color on different contrasted backgrounds can make both objects appear as
if they are in fact different colors.
This illusion is seen even more dramatically with text, as
you can see in the example below, using our brand’s logo!
The logo color is the same in both, even if the left might appear lighter to the naked eye.
After learning more about illusions in design and how they
can affect our perception, you may start to become more aware of what effects
these types of instances have on your brain. Perhaps you might even try
implementing a hidden illusion into your own work to engage your audience in a
new and intriguing way!
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