Top-Down Visual Processing.

http://www.konstantindatz.de/?p=529

"Dodekalender" is a product concept for a paperweight calendar in a 3-d form. First, our eyes fixate briefly at the whole product. After perceiving that there's more to it than just the colorful shape sphere/block, we look closely to specific given areas to give us a better understanding of what this product is trying to accomplish. We fixate at each pentagonal side to discover that it represent a month of the year and with the corner of our eyes, we can foresee that the rest of the pentagonal sides should also represent a month each. As we try to look for a certain month or even a date of a month, our attention is captured for longer periods of time as we try to simultaneously look for and absorb the bits of information that are presented.

With this color chart, our attention becomes biased to our visual and cognitive goals of wanting to see the month that we are interested in and finding the matching color/hue on the structure. We would rotate it around, passing the (right-now) unimportant sides/months, to achieve our goal of finding the right color and the right month.