Design Nomenclature / Composition
Common region
Also called enclosure, grouping by region
This entry has not been translated yet and is shown in English.
Elements inside a shared bounded area group together even when proximity and similarity argue otherwise. The boundary can be a rule, a tint, or a shadow, and need not be closed. Palmer added it to the classical set in 1992; it reliably beats proximity when the two are set against each other.
In practice
This is the card. A faint background tint groups harder than tightening the spacing does — which is why card layouts survive spacing nobody audited.
Not to be confused with
- ProximityElements near one another read as a group before any other cue is weighed. Distance does the work, and it is relative: a field is parsed by comparing gaps across it, not by measuring any one. Where proximity and similarity conflict, proximity usually wins.
- Uniform connectednessA visibly connected region — elements joined by a line, a bar, or an unbroken fill — reads as a single unit. Palmer and Rock proposed it in 1994 as prior to the classical principles: connection groups first, and proximity and similarity only get a vote on what is left.