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A client asked for pure black and I finally get why that was a mistake
Had a project for a local bakery in Austin about 3 weeks ago. They wanted a dark theme for their order app, insisted on #000000 black backgrounds. I fought it but gave in after like four rounds of feedback. Then they showed it to me on their phone outdoors and the text just vibrated, my eyes hurt looking at it. Grabbed a sample of gray like #121212 and it fixed everything. My old habit was always max contrast, pure black, pure white. Now I'm redoing 3 other projects. Anyone else get called out for pure black before?
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miles_roberts221mo ago
My buddy runs a screen printing shop and he had the same thing happen with a shirt design. Pure black ink on white shirts was fine, but when they did a dark navy shirt with black print it just looked like a void, you couldnt even read the shop name from across the room. He switched to like a 10% gray mix and suddenly it popped. The funny thing is the client never even noticed the change, they just said it looked better somehow.
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brown.susan1mo ago
Wait, did he try a lighter gray on the navy tee first, or did he just jump straight to that 10% mix? Because Im curious if theres some trial and error involved or if he just knew from experience that darker colors eat black ink like that. Also, was the gray still readable from across the room, or did he have to bump it up to like 15% for it to really stand out?
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