Crooked Pixels Logo

Crooked Pixels

Musings about design, technology and everything in between.

Common Fate

Common Fate

Move two things together and the eye weds them, whether you meant it or not.

Common fate is the strongest grouping cue in perception: elements moving the same way at the same time read as one unit, outranking colour, shape, even proximity. A murmuration of starlings is thousands of birds seen as a single body, because they turn together. Nothing binds them but shared motion; the instant they scatter, the body is gone.

TL;DR

Common fate is a Gestalt principle of perception stating that visual elements moving in the same direction and at the same speed are perceived as a single group, regardless of differences in their colour, shape, or position. It is regarded as one of the strongest grouping cues in visual perception.