Thinking About… Colour
Posted: Tue 21 February, 2006 Filed under: Own Business, Thinking About..., Web Development 2 Comments »As with yesterday’s “Thinking About…” post, don’t even bother if you’re not interested in web design and so on…
Following on from yesterday’s post about design (I think there’s going to be a set of these before long, so you’ve been warned) I’m going to move into the next phase, which is more about colour on websites.
As clearly evidenced by d4d™, I’m not particularly convinced by the entire “backgrounds really should be white” ethos. I can see why, in general, black text on white paper/screen is a standard, and has been for years. And I also agree that for pretty much any non-personal (i.e. business oriented) site, the eye-singeing colours of d4d™ are completely inadvisable.
But why should the majority of sites follow the same trend? OK, yes, there’s the issue of contrast – but white text on a black or dark background works just as well, contrast-wise, as black text on white background. So what’s the issue? Personally I find that white-on-black is far easier to read, and the dark background is far easier on the eye than acres of pure brilliant white. And so long as you’ve got your styles sorted, it doesn’t matter a toss whether you’re visually impaired or not, because the high-contrast still works, and you can always set a “printable page” version to go back to black-on-white with no problem at all.
Personally, I find that having most sites looking the same ends up being horrendously dull – in fact, blogs and personal sites sometimes seem to be the only ones that have some variety to them now.
As it is, I like using the light-on-dark colour scheme far more than its more standard inverse. Of course a lot of it also comes down to client requirements – but when it’s sites I’m working on for myself, to attract people and get them using a new idea/concept, I think having it look different to “the norm” is probably a good thing.
I think a lot of this type of stuff is going to be a fairly complicated development trail, with a lot of “try things out”. As I carry on with it I’ll be publicising more of the work, and asking/demanding/begging for feedback and thoughts from users. Perhaps working to what the end-user wants is the most radical concept of all…
D4d with a yellow background is best. Yellow backgrounds have been proved to be easier to read …..for those who have problems………..of which I am one first thing in the morning. Black on white can leave a halo round the letters to the viewer.
Besides……..everyone knows I’m reading D4D with this yellow background…it changes the light in the office.
Two sides to this. One, as Andy points out, is basic legibility/readability. The other is personal preference. Regardless of whether it’s easier to read X on Y, to different people certain colours schemes just don’t go.
I do NOT like your “Yellow” page, and use the “Worksafe” variant. No surprise there as, as is evident from my own site, I’m a prefer of subtle colours than anything too bold or jarring.