This is bizarre and just completely and utterly wrong.
The first part is true... yes, obviously shadows aren't black.
But in the real world (including screens and pigments) nothing is black if there's a lighting source somewhere. The #000 on your monitor is just dark gray, because your black pixel is still being lit by nearby pixels, ambient light, etc. And the LCD component (or unlit OLED) isn't perfect black anyways.
Actual good graphic design advice is to aim for a comfortable level of contrast. Not too little, and not too much. Which is why most good websites don't use pure-black-on-pure-white, it's a little too strong.
But another big reason for not using pure black or white for backgrounds is that they allow you to use #000 or #FFF for emphasis highlights that really "pop".
But absolutely none of this has anything to do with #000 being "too black" that's "not natural". That's just utter nonsense.
> But absolutely none of this has anything to do with #000 being "too black" that's "not natural". That's just utter nonsense.
It would be if that point was made anywhere in the article. Thankfully, it's not.
The article points are :
- you are surrounded by black which are actually not black but rather dark grey with a significant amount of color mixed in ;
- pure black should be avoided as it tends to overpower other colors in a palette ;
- mixing an increasing amount of color to your grey as they get darker will make them softer and feels less dull.
> It would be if that point was made anywhere in the article. Thankfully, it's not.
The article literally says: "When you put pure black next to a set of meticulously picked colors, the black overpowers everything else. It stands out because it’s not natural."
Pretty sure that's exactly the point I'm describing. The author literally uses the words "not natural".
And my point is that the author's worries about pure black are irrelevant because #000 isn't pure black either. It's already just dark gray on any real screen, so there's no need to avoid it.
Well, it is not natural. In almost any literal situation you're not surrounded by black, but various shades of dark. As a concept it's foreign and thus, not natural.
Right, but the author is confusing the "pure black" you're describing with #000. That's the error.
#000 is perfectly natural. It's my unlit laptop screen, which is basically the same color as my black chair, my black printer, etc. So using the idea that "pure black" is unnatural is zero justification for avoiding #000 on screen.
#000 is your unlit laptop screen. But the designer doesn't know what color that is.
By having a very dark grey with saturation, like they advocate, they can (get close to) a saturated dark color that works with their design scheme, instead of something that is arbitrary based on your environment and that you're actively training your eyes to subtract from the image.
It seems like you're making the argument that no color palettes are any more natural than any other color palettes, since all colors exist in nature, but I don't think that's the point of the article.
You may be right that #000 is not actually pure black, because of the light reflecting off the laptop screen and other such reasons, but when looking at an image, our brain tends to compensate for these things. It interprets colors based on the surrounding colors in the image. Introducing pure black into a color palette without being thoughtful can throw off the balance and create a color combination that feels "unnatural", since it would be rare to see colors with that sort of contrast side-by-side in nature.
> Introducing pure black into a color palette without being thoughtful can throw off the balance
But my point is precisely that this is incorrect, that there is nothing special about #000.
In reality, let's say your other #888 color is giving off 54 units of luminence according to some measure. And maybe your #111 gives off 8 units of luminence and your #000 appears to have 6 units of luminence because of ambient reflection and diffusion. There is nothing special about those 6 units of luminence. You're still far away from 0 units of luminence.
> it would be rare to see colors with that sort of contrast side-by-side in nature.
This is also not correct. Our eyes interpret a gigantic range of contrast. What any screen can produce is a tiny fraction of that. We see far, far, far more contrast side-by-side in nature than we can on any computer screen.
We're discussing different things, I think. As someone with painting experience, I'm focusing on palettes and value ranges, and what colors and values when put next to each other feel the most pleasing and 'natural'. You seem to be focusing on the objective experience of color, how 'pure black' on a screen is not truly pure black, and how nature contains all the colors we experience on an LCD screen, and more. I don't disagree with your points, these are just two separate discussions.
That's not perfect black. The black of your OLED is still reflecting and diffusing ambient light. It's still just dark gray, just like any black object next to it.
"Perfect black" is something more akin to Vantablack. [1] Which you are not going to encounter in any normal setting.
Contrast ratio itself is an insufficient metric, because it is ill-defined for emissive displays ("What's the display contrast of #111 on #000 on an OLED? - about inf:1" => "Okay, NEVER USE #000!"). It works in specific circumstances, but not as a general approach.
I think you'd need to define a sensible range of brightnesses relative to the viewing environment and then the brightness difference between background and foreground (in stops). The latter avoids becoming meaningless with dark backgrounds, because the brightness difference between a few cd/m² (~black on an IPS panel) and 100 cd is about the same as 0/m² cd and 100 cd/m², convesely, it really doesn't matter for perception if the typeface is 2 cd/m² or ~0 cd/m², unlike what the contrast ratio would suggest for some displays.
A honest question: why books do traditionally use pure black on white? Is it a matter of ink costs and they would also look better with a slightly lighter ink, or do different principles apply than on screens?
Two things. First, most books aren't -- the paper is gray-ish and the black is matte so under lighting it's more like dark gray.
Second, the contrast is limited to ambient lighting. Whereas the white on computer screens is often far brighter than a sheet of white paper nearby, which is why avoiding extreme contrast is even more important.
The books I own don't use actually white paper, with the notable exceptions of graphic novels and expensive textbooks. Most are a greyish beige. Inks aren't always a full-on black, either -- most are a very dark gray, some with a touch of brown.
Most books aren't "graphic design" -- they're humdrum utilitarian walls of text. Books like graphic novels, textbooks and coffee table books with color graphics are printed on white paper because they can optimize for color fidelity between design and production.
Books try for pure black inks to maximize contrast against a not-pure-white background. Most book paper tends to have a little yellow, a little brown, and a carefully non-specular texture. Art book paper tends towards glossy, bluish tones closer to pure white.
One analogy this makes me think of with respect to mixing and mastering within music production is the idea of headroom. You usually want to leave your levels low enough that the unmastered mix never goes above -6 to -3 DB, and in order to do that, you'll usually end up mixing a lot of your tracks significantly lower and a couple of tracks close to the ceiling. Putting something straight at 0DB is a no-no because you obliterate the headroom.
The first part is true... yes, obviously shadows aren't black.
But in the real world (including screens and pigments) nothing is black if there's a lighting source somewhere. The #000 on your monitor is just dark gray, because your black pixel is still being lit by nearby pixels, ambient light, etc. And the LCD component (or unlit OLED) isn't perfect black anyways.
Actual good graphic design advice is to aim for a comfortable level of contrast. Not too little, and not too much. Which is why most good websites don't use pure-black-on-pure-white, it's a little too strong.
But another big reason for not using pure black or white for backgrounds is that they allow you to use #000 or #FFF for emphasis highlights that really "pop".
But absolutely none of this has anything to do with #000 being "too black" that's "not natural". That's just utter nonsense.