Design Tip: Never Use Black

http://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/

by ivolo • 14 years ago

761 210 14 years ago

highace• 14 years ago

Good read. I came to this exact realisation myself not too long ago too. A hint of blue in your greys makes them much more appealing than pure grey.

re_todd• 14 years ago

Reminds me of the time I was looking through a page wondering how the designer got the greys to look so good. I was surprised when I saw the css class called "bluish-grey", and I suddenly realized he had been using a blue tint and I hadn't really noticed. (He also used #333 for blacks, which looked really good, and I've been using ever since).

dsr_2• 14 years ago

Unless, you know, you want highly readable text. In which case there's nothing better than pure black, as your text color or as your background (but not both at once, please.)

powerslave12r• 14 years ago

While the inverse of that (light text on dark) makes for a terrible reading experience, yet so many bloggers/sites do it.

(Funny observation: I seem to prefer dark themes for coding Python, Ruby, C and light ones for Java)

darkstalker• 14 years ago

My text editor background is pure black. I can't stand writing code on a white background for a long time. Some people uses blue backgrounds that are a lot worse.

kstenerud3• 14 years ago

I've always preferred light on dark.

Bottom line: You can't please everyone.

NeilRShah• 14 years ago

Your observation is interesting! Do you have any insight into why that is?

vidarh2• 14 years ago

I always prefer light on dark, to the extent that my Hackernews, Reddit, Google and Gmail and a few others all have user styles applied to darken them. And my terminal is light text on dark background. Not to pure black, though, even though I had never thought about why I didn't go for as dark as possible.

EDIT: Also, my window borders and Unity dock are also near black. Overall, the only white backgrounds you'll see on my desktop are the occasional "loud" website or apps that don't obey my theme settings.

pizza7• 14 years ago

Why is light on dark a bad reading experience? Is it just specific executions of it or in general?

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

Actually even then on the screen you don't want #000 because it's more contrast than you need and starts to strain the eye.

https://twitter.com/H_FJ/status/11800719859

sp332• 14 years ago

Hm? That tweet says that #000 looks better. Edit: OK I totally missed the first smaller tweet at the top. Banner blindness I guess.

TheCowboy• 14 years ago

It would be nice if he would use black for the text on his blog. Lighter-than-black on white can be painful on aging or strained eyes.

This seems to be an unfortunate new color trend. The problem is worse when zooming in on the page doesn't work or is capped.

inetsee2• 14 years ago

I've complained about this trend in the past, and it seems to be getting worse rather than better. I have the Evernote Clearly bookmarklet in my toolbar (it seems to work better than Readability) and I find myself using it more and more often. I don't mind not quite black text on a very (very) light grey background, but far too many websites just don't have enough contrast to be readable.

scribblemacher• 14 years ago

I agree. For reading, high contrast is exactly what I want. Despite all these trends in UX design, the best user interface is still a white piece of paper with blank ink.

mistercow2• 14 years ago

I'm not sure you can use this particular blog as a good counterexample though. That text is damn-near 40% white, which is ridiculously light.

seanmcdirmid• 14 years ago

The colors in the blog read fine to me. I have trouble with color bleeding when straight black is used on straight white. I would have gone with something a bit darker, say 60 or 70%, but definitely not 100% black.

JoelSutherland• 14 years ago

A subtle point this article makes is that pure black doesn't exist as displayed by your monitor. #000 is just the darkest value your monitor can display.

Across monitors, contrast ratio can vary by over an order of magnitude.

I'm not saying I don't prefer black, but I don't enjoy reading black text on a white background on an OLED phone in a dark room.

hkmurakami2• 14 years ago

Out of curiosity: are there any objects that are "pure black"? (i.e. 100% absorption of the entire visible spectrum of light)

My naive guess is that the only way to have pure "black" is an absence of light (ex: deep caves, deep sea, etc)

talmand2• 14 years ago

If #000 is not pure black but the darkest value the monitor can display then that defeats the purpose of his article, doesn't it?

Plus, he played Halo in high school? Geez, I'm not young. He meant to say Doom right?

tripzilch10• 14 years ago

It's actually a subtle but important point this article conspicuously does NOT make.

Apart from that, I agree. Except that your lack of enjoyment reading from that OLED phone has not much to do with the use of pure black and everything with the use of pure white.

It's unpleasant reading #666 text on #fff background in a dark room just as much, because nobody likes looking into a bright lamp in a dark room.

pizza7• 14 years ago

For even more readable text, white on black. Semantically, you want to focus on the content and make the user ignore the background. But if the background (i.e. white) is visually louder (sorry for the poor wording) than the text (blackness / nothingness), it's a bad reading experience.

robertpateii• 14 years ago

White on black can create a very difficulty reading experience. It may increase the contrast, but that's not the only factor in readability.

I personally prefer light text on dark background, but never white on black. Silver an a dark blue works great for me. But font and font weight are also factors.

Because of all those factors, black text on white background is more forgiving and more broadly expected. Which is why my websites are black on white but my vim color scheme is "darkblue".

adestefan• 14 years ago

I find that there is nothing worse than trying to read pure white on pure black.

podperson• 14 years ago

The evidence is that black on white beats white on black.

WiseWeasel2• 14 years ago

Or if you're not trying to imitate nature. Unlike paintings of real objects, computer interfaces don't necessarily have to look "natural", as long as they look good.

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

True! But "natural" is often what looks good because of years and years of evolution :p

crazygringo3• 14 years ago

No, that's the whole point of the article! Pure black text on a pure white blackground is too much contrast, which is uncomfortable for the eye over a long period of time. It's bad for readability.

Use dark gray on white, or black on light gray, but don't use pure black on pure white. It's too much.

Remember, the contrast between white and black on computer monitors is greater than on the printed page, because computer-monitor white is brighter than a page usually.

The printed page only achieves this level of high-contrast when you're in broad daylight, like on the beach. And of course, most people wear sunglasses in that case, because it's too much.

(Of course, there are exceptions to every graphic design "rule", but avoiding pure black text on a pure white background is pretty standard one for webpages.)

Splines• 14 years ago

Plus some colors aren't readable on pure black. Dark blue or dark red, for instance, are very difficult to read on a pure black background. (I used to use a pure black background for my terminal windows and switched it to a dark gray for this reason).

mark-r3• 14 years ago

I find too many web pages go the other way and use a light gray for the text. The text looks washed out. Too little contrast is as bad as too much.

mbq• 14 years ago

Remember that you can arbitrarily tweak contrast with monitor and ambient light -- I'm reading tons of science papers which are always black-on-white and few minutes spent on setup made reading a pleasure. IMO the real problem is that the default setting in most devices is a mixture of inhumane brightness and grotesque oversaturation -- thus designers try to fix a virtual problem hurting people with a proper setup.

geoka92• 14 years ago

avoiding pure black text on a pure white background is pretty standard one for webpages.

I wish it wasn't, at least not to the extent it is in the OP blog. The text is hard to read.

Lockyy• 14 years ago

And this is all the reason why hacker news has a slightly orange tinted background behind the actual content instead of just leaving it pure white like the background behind that.

mbell2• 14 years ago

> Pure black text on a pure white blackground is too much contrast

As a mac and windows user, I find this correlates heavily to the OS being used as the font rendering is very different. Black on white is very readable on windows, it looks like hell on a mac.

mattacular• 14 years ago

No, the article was a gross generalization.

rjzzleep2• 14 years ago

yes, remember antialiased text is not black ever. pure black font you wont get with antialiased text. and antialiased text == readability --

some people like me will just live with it because most fonts look too crapy when theyre not antialiased

dspeyer• 14 years ago

> Remember, the contrast between white and black on computer monitors is greater than on the printed page, because computer-monitor white is brighter than a page usually.

Only if the lights are off in the room.

There may be such a thing as too much contrast. I haven't encountered it. But it doesn't make the text completely unreadable the way too little contrast does. When I copy+paste the text of a website into a text editor, it's always because the contrast was too low.

When it doubt, increase contrast.

dsr_2• 14 years ago

So at what point did I advocate pure black on pure white? Please reread.

tripzilch10• 14 years ago

you're attacking a straw man. he did not mention pure white. the eye-hurt is because of the pure white, not the pure black.

pure black on light gray does not hurt my eyes, while dark gray on pure white does, after a while, late at night.

rijoja• 14 years ago

I guess it's more acceptable to use #000 for text because the curves in most fonts are rather thin. Text with a larger font will appear darker than text with a smaller font. Just as a thin line will appear bright next to a thicker line, even though they have the same color. The examples are not about the color of text, the focus lies on backgrounds and shadows. In fact most of the text in the pictures is white.

mistercow2• 14 years ago

I have never seen light-on-dark done in a way that didn't hurt my eyes to read, but when it comes closest to being acceptable is when the light is not completely white and the dark is not completely black.

I generally find that text is most easily readable when the background is very slightly darker than white, and the text is slightly lighter than black, and this has the added benefit of leaving you open to emphasize elements by increasing their contrast beyond that point.

The main useful idea that I think this article gives is this: don't use up all of your dynamic range in one place.

whalesalad• 14 years ago

I can't recall the study, but recently it was determined #444 is a perfect color for body text.

hakanito• 14 years ago

Totally agree.

PaulHoule• 14 years ago

how about "never use white?"

rgb(255,255,255) is the brightest color value you can have on the screen and colors like rgb(255,0,0) don't really pop against it because they're dark in comparison.

rokhayakebe• 14 years ago

I agree, white is a lot harder on the eyes. As an experiment I switched my kindle fire reading app to a white background and forgot about it. Two weeks later I realized I was reading for a noticeable shorter amount of time (lets' say average 20 mns per day as opposed to 1 hour + per day). I would pick up the reader, but I just would not be able to go for a long time.

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

My problem with not using white is that even slightly-grayed whites take on very different tints depending on the display, so as much as I'd like to use it, I avoid it.

But, I do remember one of my drawing teachers at RISD telling us not to use the white charcoal sticks in our charcoal drawings (there the white is the weird unnatural element). And it's true, when I mixed in whites for highlights instead just erasing to the color of the paper, things started to feel weird.

duaneb3• 14 years ago

Yes, and this will only only grow worse the better screens get w/r/t brightness and contrast.

ricardobeat7• 14 years ago

I love #fafafa.

lsdafjklsd• 14 years ago

Learned about this in my motion graphics class, no such thing as pure black in nature.

Also, all of the articles on your website link to this story. Great reads.

Xcelerate2• 14 years ago

Not quite true. Black holes for instance. Also, there's some carbon nanotube pigments used to absorb like 99.9999% of light that lands on it. It still looks pure black even when using a powerful flash to take a photo of it. These pigments were developed by NASA for use in telescopes where even a little bit of light can ruin the image.

bberrry• 14 years ago

Black holes are not black dude.. You can't see them at all.

duaneb3• 14 years ago

> ...no such thing as pure black in nature.

This is exactly why it can be so effective when used correctly. Obvious, if you're painting, black looks uncanny, but that's a far different situation than digital design.

ars• 14 years ago

There is no such thing as pure black on your computer either - your monitor does not have an infinite contrast ratio.

So this is a pretty pointless rule, since it's impossible to violate it.

The human eye uses relative colors, not absolute ones. So the darkest color on your artwork IS black, no matter that it returns some light.

danso3• 14 years ago

The best design tip I've picked up in the last five years was that sometimes, in your CSS definitions, you can use #555 or #777 or even #333, and not just black.

I don't mean that I didn't know you could enter hex numbers for colors, I just didn't realize that when I wanted a "black" border, #888 makes for a much less jarring border than #000...and this is critical if you have a lot of bordered elements.

gmac• 14 years ago

Yes -- and for borders it's arguably still black, just thinner, since a 1px line at 50% black could be an aliased representation of a 0.5px line at 100% black.

hnriot2• 14 years ago

This comes up often on hn. Using painting, especially Wayne Thiebaud's as support for the argument is very weak. He's a pop art painter that is known for using exaggerated colors, it's part of the pop art movement's signature style.

I would agree that when painting a shadow, you will likely find if you look carefully that it is not black, but in web design color is different and design has different goals to painting. The former is about clarity and function, the latter is expression and feeling.

In rebuttal to the argument, there are several hundred years of printing that seemed to have moved western civilization forward quite nicely that was black on white.

imperialWicket• 14 years ago

Most paper isn't #fff, and most black inks don't appear as #000. Also, I think that tactic opens the debate to aspects of technology, manufacturing, and cost analysis.

I agree that painting isn't the most optimal tool for pushing this point, but I don't think the print argument is a whole lot better when comparing to css styling technique.

jessevondoom• 14 years ago

Well the thing with printing is that the K part of CMYK is actually not the darkest black, yet it's 100% K that's used to print a book.

Fully saturated rich black (100% C+M+Y+K) is usually a little too jarring against a bright stock — take a look at most high quality books and notice that the stock is off-white and the ink isn't nearly as rich as #000 black on screen.

I think the original point as a lot of merit. Staying even just a little bit further from #000 or even pure grays (try #335, etc) can give more even tones and keep contrast high while reducing fatigue.

You're right about comparing art to print though — different goals, even though the conclusion is valid.

michaelmior• 14 years ago

Back when I used to do some print design, we always used 95% K max. Anything else came out funny on the stock we were using.

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

You've got your goals wrong. Painting might be about expression and feeling. (Don't want to go down that path.) Design is definitely about clarity and function AND expression and feeling. All of the major brands that you give money to every day have spent LOTS of time on expression and feeling to convey the right messages to their consumers.

Try telling Apple that design has nothing to do with feeling.

And yeah, like the others have said, there was no pure black or pure white (at least as pure as the screen provides) during those several hundred years of amazing printing.

ceslami• 14 years ago

Not that this completely contradicts your point, but often a non-black/white shadow is web design is awesome. Subtle moves like high-saturation shadows that match your color scheme, which Ian discusses, are something I employ often (for both inset and outset shadows).

mtts• 14 years ago

It's not even always relevant in painting. The impressionists (who invented the hatred of black, AFAIK) were obsessed with painting light effects, so to them it was important. Their academic colleagues and to the painters that preceded them didn't care about photorealism and so used black liberally to emphasize depth and contrast.

michaelpinto2• 14 years ago

Paul Rand (who was perhaps the best graphic designer of the 20th Century) would disagree with that "tip"

danso3• 14 years ago

...can you provide insight why? It may be so, but context is important, and argument by authority is not particularly helpful.

hnriot2• 14 years ago

I would imagine the commenter was referring to the works of Rand. Google for some of his corporate brands and look at all the black. Try the Next logo for example.

lsiclait• 14 years ago

Here's an article with Paul Rand's views on the subject (that extols black)

http://www.paul-rand.com/foundation/thoughts_black/#.UCLgysj...

michaelpinto2• 14 years ago

...if i ever meet you in person i owe you a drink! (thank you)

delackner• 14 years ago

quote from your link: "In some countries black or near-black has been employed extensively"

he also calls the shadows on a tree trunk black, so it seems he is not really arguing in favor of #000 but in favor of the use of very dark monochromatic colors, including true black. Also ALL of his examples are completely black/white or grayscale images of PRINTED or PAINTED objects, which naturally all do not achieve #000.

His views are entirely personal, as are our own. Personally, I found the #000 in his Next Logo to be the worst aspect of the whole design, since its extreme contrast suggests a low-tech print process or an old EGA screen incapable of more nuance. This is an aspect of most of his logos that I have never really liked, the same extreme contrast and blockiness that makes his IBM logo look more like an old ASCII display in someone's garage than the representation of a bold and powerful company.

mynameishere• 14 years ago

Okay, don't use black. I can just go to Tools -> Web Developer -> CSS -> Disable Styles -> All Styles to fix your bad design with a superior non-design.

rimantas• 14 years ago

  > non-design

So you disable even browser defaults and this is superior?

DanBC• 14 years ago

Frustratingly often overriding everything imposed by a designer and sticking to a nice font of black on off-white; (or very pale yellow on near black) does give better results.

rlpb• 14 years ago

I'm not sure that this argument works.

#000 on my screen isn't black either. It's dark grey.

Doesn't this mean avoiding #000 for design aimed at screen display cause you to avoid pure black twice, and thus just reduce contrast? Perhaps that's what you want, and what looks better. But it isn't because #000 is pure black, because no screen can achieve that.

tinco• 14 years ago

He does not only tell you to reduce the contrast, which with a good enough screen can be arbitrarily high, he also advices you to increase the saturation. And pure black can not have saturation.

hwillis• 14 years ago

My first thought as well. But there is an argument to be made that the screen is a different world, and the black of the screen looks as unnatural as pure black in the real world. I think this would apply less to a phone or something with a short view time, as adjusting to the new color palette would take us some amount of time.

rio517• 14 years ago

Now someone needs to tell this to the people who redesigned http://salon.com recently. It's virtually unreadable.

kstenerud3• 14 years ago

It looks fine to me. What's wrong with it?

pizza7• 14 years ago

Looks completely legible over here.

azylman• 14 years ago

I really hoped that this was going to be a joke about how, if you use black, Apple will sue you for patent infringement...

mnicole• 14 years ago

I'm trying to remember the name of the designer that tried to call out fab.com a few months ago for "stealing" his aesthetic. By aesthetic I mean he puts white Helvetica type on black.

mischov• 14 years ago

In case you're curious, the text you are reading now is #000.

Which is not to say that #222 wouldn't be easier on the eyes.

radley2• 14 years ago

Probably would look less pixely...

pizza7• 14 years ago

Pixely? How would color affected 'pixeliness'?

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

But it's also on a tan background :p so it's probably fine. It's all about contrast.

hackerpolicy• 14 years ago

Upvoting so it can still look #000.

dzenn• 14 years ago

its funny how most people here dont know anything about design .. i totally agree never use black .

hamey• 14 years ago

I agree - maybe the HN crowd isn't an ideal fit for this. I've always stayed away from pure black.

pizza7• 14 years ago

Never use black because it's too strong to always be used? If you want something strong, use black. If you don't, don't. That's about it.

thinkingisfun2• 14 years ago

That's why I like using #222 for text, it leaves #000 for the <strong> tag.

Raisin• 14 years ago

Also stop using grey http://stopusinggrey.com/ add just a bit of colors to you designs.

lovskogen• 14 years ago

Unless, you know, you want to make images or video pop out with great contrast.

kstenerud3• 14 years ago

shpoonj your account has been hellbanned as of 11 days ago here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4305877

runemadsen• 14 years ago

One thing to think about is that many users have auto-dimming screens, which means that your dark-grey color will appear black anyway. What tends to happen with these low contrast, analogous color schemes is that they result in a mid-gray soup of colors. I tend to use higher contrast on the web than in print. Itten's seven color contrasts is a great way to learn how to create contrasted color schemes that still survive dimmed screens, even without using the light/dark contrast.

playhard• 14 years ago

Brilliant Article .This made me read color theory

For starters, http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/28/color-theory-for-...

http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/mobile-design-tutorials...

aw3c2• 14 years ago

Those could really use some scientific sources.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

NO. This is how we end up with dark gray text on light gray background, on a web site.

If you're building something that people will read, make it easy for them to read.

artursapek2• 14 years ago

My painting teacher at RISD told me that when he paints an outdoor scene he always mixes a tiny bit of blue into every color he uses, because the color of the sky is reflected off everything. It's a real skill to see color arbitrarily as it actually is, without attaching labels to it.

danem3• 14 years ago

I don't understand how accurate representation of color becomes a concern in the areas graphic design. Sure, black is almost never a good choice when practicing any sort of representational art. Mixing it with other pigment in a effort to darken it saps any nuance or sensitivity that may have been present in your colors, and will almost never be true to the colors you are actually observing.

I don't however, understand how any of this is relevant and applicable to most design. Offhandedly disregarding all use of black is quite silly, and shows a lack of appreciation of the interplay of colors. Designers aren't artists. Designers very often make no attempt to represent any real thing. So why should physical phenomena enter the equation?

It is also incredibly important for designers to be sensitive of color, and to be aware of how they interact and play with one another. All of that is a given.

mrxd3• 14 years ago

Human beings are accustomed to looking a physical phenomena. Designs that deviate from those rules are experienced as artificial, strange or uncomfortable. But you're right that you can't say never use black. It would be more correct to say never use black unless your goal is to make the viewer feel uncomfortable.

swasheck• 14 years ago

How do I reconcile this with "Always Bet On Black?"

gallerytungsten• 14 years ago

This article suffers from a bit of confusion over the difference between art and design.

Art: don't use the color black (or build up to it.) Good tip from "childhood art teacher." Another way of putting it: don't use black unless you know what you're doing.

Design: black is the strongest color. (The three strongest colors in design are black, white, red.) However, don't use a black background with white text (or any other color text on a dark background; bad readability). If your design isn't working in black and white, it's not working.

markbnine• 14 years ago

Except for movie posters Clockwork Orange. Aliens. Star Wars. Love the black.

incongruity3• 14 years ago

As someone with professional experience in photography and a masters in design – I think this piece is seriously lacking.

First – the photo that is used as "evidence" caught my eye quickly because it is clearly poorly processed/improperly exposed. There is no black point and that's a bad thing for the image; which leads me to say – you can't make the sweeping generalization that black is always bad. It's not – and the work of one pop art painter and a bad bit of photography isn't substantiated proof.

If you want to actually make something meaningful out of this, you'd actually push hard on the idea that too much contrast is a bad thing. Black isn't bad. Heavy contrast can be. Instead, get down to the root reasons that we have issues with contrast – in short, we're wired to notice differences in color or brightness than we are for absolute values of color or brightness. As such, it's not about one color, it's about the contrast.

Check out Jeff Johnson's Designing with the Mind in Mind: http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Mind-Simple-Understanding-In... or Colin Ware's Visual Thinking for Design: http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Thinking-Kaufmann-Interactive-T...

Both of those do a much better job at explaining the hows and whys of the average person's visual perception.

huffman• 14 years ago

A good counter example to the pop art painter are Baroque painters, who used very dark colors very heavily in their pieces http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_painting

tripzilch10• 14 years ago

Not much of those you linked to actually use pure black, but this one comes pretty close:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Francisco_de_Zurbarán_018....

It also happens to show very nicely what's wrong with using pure black as shadows: they're not shadows, they're holes.

(what a god-awful painting, btw. and they compare his work to Caravaggio's ... )

billswift• 14 years ago

He also confuses, maybe conflates would be better, art and design. For example, his statement that black over-powers everything else only applies to black masses - thin black borders or underlining is the best way to focus attention on critical points on a web page without being distracting the way bright colors can be.

ricardobeat7• 14 years ago

Those thin borders and underline also benefit from not black. #333 is usually the darkest you should go for text and these features.

ohgodthecat33• 14 years ago

I think he took the wrong message away from his art teacher as I was taught the same thing.

But it was in regards to representing realistic things with paints. As he says shadows usually aren't truly black and painting with a dark blue as your darkener is usually a better idea.

You can use black but when you use it in paintings to darken colors or for your regular darks it regularly stands out to the viewer, black is supposed to be used in very limited quantities in artistic works. (Hell half the time people recommend not buying black paint when starting out but to mix other colors to create a black looking color[1])

This doesn't really switch over to apps and other things as they don't represent any realism but instead try to allow us to focus on specific things which black can be useful.

His example image with a big black square dominating the others is a terrible example and would be better if the bottom was a representation of the layout with black as the darkest color instead of the lighter greys and grey-blues. And what we would see is more contrast but little change in distraction.

[1] http://painting.about.com/od/colourtheory/a/JimMeadersBlack....

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

OP here: No guys, I didn't take the wrong message away from Mrs. Zamula. I am aware of that "never" is not a word that should ever be taken at face value. The same way that I was aware when Mrs. Zamula forbade us from using "I like" while holding critique. You _can_ use "I like" well while giving a critique, but more often than not it means what will follow is garbage. Just like you _can_ use black, and there are absolutely good places to use it, but more often than not you'd do better with a bit of color in there.

Thiebaud's work and my photograph aren't evidence of anything other than the fact that shadows in most every image you see (whether it be real life, a painting or a photo) are not black. And that you'd be surprised at how saturated the dark colors around you are. Notice how I never said, "Thiebaud's shadows aren't black, so you shouldn't use black." There were a lot of other words in between.

I should have clarified: The black squares actually weren't about dominance at all. I put a large swath of black next to those screenshots because color is relative, and to see how far from black the dark grays in those screenshots actually are, you need a comparison point.

---

My other high school art teacher, Mrs. Totten (they taught as a pair), taught me a good lesson about photography. She would always defer to Mrs. Zamula on matters of photography because she readily admitted she had no photographic skill whatsoever. And she claimed that more people needed to acknowledge that fact, despite having their own digital camera. Well... my name is Ian, and I'm no a photographer.

But lucky for me.. that has absolutely no impact on my argument whatsoever!

gbog• 14 years ago

I would be interested to know how Chinese classic painting fits in these theories about blackness: it should represent something not to far from half of all paintings ever produced by human beings and theories thereof, and as far as I know its main mode is shades of black ink on white paper.

einhverfr• 14 years ago

Agreed. And if black is artificial, so is white, but we use black and white when designing color schemes for a couple of legitimate reasons.

White and black provide constant contrasts to which we can fix all other colors. Our brains see color by contrast, and we process color by contrast. If I have some white, some black, and some blue on a page, chances are that people will see a similar shade of blue on different monitors even if the correction is very different. The color temperature may be different on different monitors but our brain adjusts. White and black provide the tare points.

I'd note that the paintings he included in his page, I could spot black on two out of three......

ricardobeat7• 14 years ago

> I could spot black on two out of three

If you're on a Mac, go to spotlight and open Digital Color Meter. There is no black (0,0,0) in any of those paintings. The blacks you "see" are exactly the subject of this article and parent comment.

tripzilch10• 14 years ago

> I could spot black on two out of three......

this probably means you need to calibrate your monitor a little bit better. no need to use an expensive (spyder) tool unless you're a graphics artist, but if "not black" shows up as pure black, you might want to do some simple adjustments to at least make sure you can see a full colour range (just google "monitor calibration", there's many simple tutorials).

subhro• 14 years ago

I think the most important thing is the dynamic range. The range which a camera (and our eye) can see is limited. If you extend over the range, colours look, weird. Having said that, I would agree with the justification of contrast. Too much contrast can be a distraction. It is important to have a pure white and a pure black in a photo since it gives a fairly good idea about the whole palette.

geon• 14 years ago

The issues you mention are outside of the scope of a shortish blog post.

I'd say you should use black sparsly. As the article says, most things you think of as black are not really black, and when you have used black somewhere, you can no longer make anything even darker.

incongruity3• 14 years ago

>The issues you mention are outside of the scope of a shortish blog post.

Hardly. If one is going to claim to be a designer (or profess to have wisdom enough to have a "design tip") then you sure as hell better understand why what you're suggesting is in any way true, ever.

If you don't understand the 2nd order explanation (at least) you've got no business trying to explain it to the masses – because you don't understand the boundary conditions. If you do understand those boundary conditions, it should be reflected in the shared explanation, within reason.

Further, as explained in that post, the idea is wrong. It's about contrast (and, thus, dynamic range) more than it is absolute color. Indeed, if one wanted to be pedantic, they could point out that #000000 isn't actually real black and that no human has ever actually produced a truly black object. If one wanted to be slightly less pedantic and more particular, one could note that #000000 has a fuzzy meaning anyway as you're depending on the sensor of the image device (when/if it's captured) and then the output device – the rendering of black points (and whites) isn't the same on almost any two devices.

Pulling back slightly, even from a novice's perspective, the admonishment to never use black is just wrong. The point is/should be that contrast is important, but too much contrast can also be bad. Black can easily be used in such a way as to not yield overly contrasted images – it just needs to be paired with another color sufficiently dark so as to keep contrast low enough to be acceptable. That is something that happens all of the time, in digital media and otherwise. So, trying to tell anyone that "black is bad" without an explanation leads to stupid design decisions that are made because of incomplete or woefully imprecise understandings of one's audience.

You may be okay with that, but I think it's sloppy. It's the stuff that cargo cults and fads are made of – and I expect better from smart people like the author.

7952• 14 years ago

It is seriously lacking, but the underlying point is good. Consider using colors that are nearly black in preference to complete black.

D9u2• 14 years ago

While the article is well presented, and contains many good points, I must take issue with a few of the ideas set forth.

1.) I'm not taking "design tips" from someone whose site takes so long to load on a slow connection.

2.) Obviously the author has never been in a cave and turned all lighting off. Cave darkness is a complete and total absence of light & color save for black. This color IS NATURAL!

3.) In the spirit of the "green" movement, doesn't the use of black equate to less power consumption? (Remember http://www.blackle.com/ "energy saving search?")

That said, I'm sure that the author is vastly more artistically talented than I, as I can't even color within the lines in my grandchildren's coloring books!

ianstormtaylor10• 14 years ago

Coloring inside the lines is vastly overrated. Just ask Mrs. Zamula.

ricardobeat7• 14 years ago

The moment you add a dot of any visible color in that cave, it's not pitch black anymore. So no, 100% black is not found in nature paired to other colors.

kadavy• 14 years ago

Avoiding black definitely causes you to make color choices that add more dimension and realism to your interfaces. Interfaces, after all, are representations of reality.

One helpful tip: "warm" colors jump out at you, and "cool" colors recede away from you. You can use this to your advantage when designing buttons, or even when working with typography.

More detail in this article, "Why Monet Never Used Black": http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-color-theory/

novalis• 14 years ago

"Why does the Facebook Mobile interface feel so nice?"

I didn't know that, looks horrible to me. But either way a somewhat good read in general.

duaneb3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure this applies to user interfaces and digital design, where style is a huge aspect. The starkness of true black on true white is stark, and sometimes that's what you're looking for, especially for minimalism. For example, see http://whatthefuckshouldimakefordinner.com/. I would think a design student would recognize that not everyone wants to have the same look and feel as other people, and there is a place for black. Just not in his sketching class at RISD.

chipsy• 14 years ago

Disagree with the concept. I would recommend studying pixel art for examples of really strong color usage - most modern styles work within an economical palette, just like in graphic design. Black is commonplace, it's how it's used that matters. The scene as a whole has similar considerations for contrast and weight as graphic design, even though the individual elements tend to emphasize detail and lighting.

Enormous pixel art thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=167.0

codegeek• 14 years ago

funny thing for me is that I had a hard time reading his blog since the font color is too light for me. It could just be me though.

cag_ii• 14 years ago

Same here, the dark grey used for the article title would look much better IMO.

alexanderh2• 14 years ago

I couldnt disagree with this article more. I'm frustrated with how little webpages use black.

In all my development environments where i'm coding for hours on end, i always find black background with white text to be far superior in terms of readability. I wish everyone had AMOLED screens (even on our desktops) so using black had more of a real purpose.

swah• 14 years ago

Little experiment: I changed text from black to #130F30 on a website and couldn't notice the difference..

Teapot2• 14 years ago

I only see the difference when i know to look for it. That's good design.

icoder• 14 years ago

Well, black is not black, it is simply the darkest color your medium (paper, screen, etc) can display. Not using it would effectively reduce the dynamic range of your medium.

localhost3000• 14 years ago

anyone else have this experience: reading this article on an iphone only to notice that the thing in my hand - perhaps the most successful consumer electronic device in the world - was as close to jet black as anything else I'd seen today? :\ ... what about black turtle necks - are those OK?

poppysan• 14 years ago

It really depends. I am not a fan of the tip because it is a bit misleading. The reason there aren't many true blacks in representational art is due to reflection of light into the shadows.

Also, given the overall temperature of an image, it can be just as high-contrast to use a color on the opposite end of the color wheel.

Either way, these are style decisions, which are highly subjective.

electic• 14 years ago

There is a lot of black on HackerNews and I love HN:)

esolyt• 14 years ago

I find this approach too extreme. Black is sometimes needed. You may choose to use true black and maximize the contrast when you need to improve readability, especially for accessibility reasons.

rjzzleep2• 14 years ago

op obviously not as knowledgeable as he thinks he is. but as some here mentioned theres nothing better than light on dark for eye comfort.

otoh if you take antialiased font it will NEVER be really black anyway. and people who use bitmap fonts for long hour coding sessions just because it feels better, causes less headaches etc. will tell you that you can take your advice and ... ;)

synor• 14 years ago

Ansel Adams disagrees.

ClintonWu• 14 years ago

Funny to see this ranked right above Pulse's post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360756

ehutch79• 14 years ago

to all the commenters arguing against the point... this article isnt for you. it's for people who just through everything up as #000 and #FFF.

It's for the people who desperately need things like bootstrap.

jasonlingx• 14 years ago

Erm... The "absolute black" on your screen isn't absolute black either...

Design Tip: Never Use Black

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