Ignore the fads and go back to the typographic principles of print — keep your type black, and vary weight and font instead of grayness.

Also provide a dark mode or make sure automatic dark mode transforms work.

Also provide a good base font size and do not use serifs for body copy like the article.

Several designers pointed me to Ian Storm Taylor’s article, “Design Tip: Never Use Black.” In it, Taylor argues that pure black is more concept than color. “We see dark things and assume they are black things,” he writes. “When, in reality, it’s very hard to find something that is pure black. Roads aren’t black. Your office chair isn’t black. The sidebar in Sparrow isn’t black. Words on web pages aren’t black.”

Taylor was correct. The problem is applying it badly. You can back off from absolute black and white while still having good contrast. This is especially true for dark mode.

The author later compares things to newspapers, which are traditionally black on white. Except not quite; newsprint paper isn’t bleached white, and I’m guessing the ink isn’t quite as deep black as it first appears, either.

More importantly, there’s an important distinction between newspapers and computer screens. Newspapers only reflect light around them, while screens give off their own light. This means screens can be significantly brighter than the environment around them.

That’s why dark mode works so well. It keeps the bright points on the screen to the parts you need.

Thank you. A long overdue article.

I’m currently fighting with my main software. It uses gray on gray, a small font you can’t change or resize, and highlights important messages with weak red and green text that I cannot see as “non-gray” due to the fonts size and thin-ness. So it is hard for me to find the few important lines in maybe twenty pages of output.

There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background

This was the trend circa 2012 too, at least I recall Microsoft’s pages and software becoming less legible. Not sure if I got used to it, screens got better, or it went back to higher contrast.

So my browser’s reader theme is at black background (#000) with white text (#fff) and I just reduce the backlight at night, while keeping the windows open in the day time.

Similarly, I reduce mobile brightness indoors, but keep it at full, when using maps while riding.

When using an LCD monitor, it is beneficial to be able to reduce backlight brightness instead of reducing the colour value in software.