Is there a word for when something looks correct when wrong?

Is there a word for when something looks correct when wrong? For instance in art, drawing something that technically would be wrong in reality, but drawing it correctly actually looks wrong and drawing it wrong looks correct.

I used to perform magic and I thought there was a term for this.


This is the concept behind optical balance or compositional balance, which is part of the Gestalt theory that a design needs to "feel right" as a whole, rather than simply adhering to geometric definitions that may be quantitatively "correct" but look wrong.

This website shows some great examples of designs that simply look better when the quantitative rules are ignored. Examples include making shapes different sizes so that they appear to be the same size, darkening colors on text so that it appears to be the same color as an adjacent shape, or misaligning text so that it appears properly aligned. Subtleties in the human visual system can cause us to see differences where there actually are none, so sometimes a design will purposefully make things "wrong" so that they appear to be "right".