Re: TE Site Critique Requsted

Nearly any book or course, for the last 100 years, on typography and
readability has stated the fact that light text on a dark background is hard
on the eyes and tedious to read unless the text is fairly large. Most people
just won't bother to read material done in this way unless the publisher
really bolds up the text to an almost ridiculous degree. Reverse out
typography (light text on dark background) is only used in titles and
headings or really large, short and simple statements.

http://styleguide.wustl.edu/appendixj.html
Bases for Effective Reading, by Miles A. Tinker, University of Minnesota
Press, 1966

http://www.loc.gov/loc/webstyle/chapter4.html
US Library of Congress Web style guide. (almost at the bottom)

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/profirst/r.htm
Encyclopedia of Typography and Electronic Communication

http://www.eyewire.com/magazine/columns/robin/readability/read2.html
Improving readability - Type Talk

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0962489158/104-7257768-1876749
Book - Type and Layout: How Typography and Design Can Get Your Message
Across--Or Get in the Way (Learn here why reverse type reduces comprehension
500%)

http://www.reslady.com/web-resume-rules.html
WEB RESUMES: New Genre, New Rules

Take a look at any newspaper, book, or magazine. Occasionally you'll see an
amateur looking ad in reverse, but it's pretty rare and usually never done
by a professional agency. The eye just doesn't like it. It's one reason why,
in the old green screen monitor days, many workers had to take long and
regular breaks to keep from getting headaches. The Federal General
Accounting office eventually banned them in favor of "page white" monitors
for federal employees, where dark text was displayed on a adjustable white
background.

For some reason new designers on the Web never take the time to educate
themselves in the field of typography. They might learn HTML, Flash, or
imagery, but don't think of typography, forgetting that the text might be
the really important part of a website. It's all well and good to have a
real visual masterpiece, but if the text isn't read, the client usually
loses out.

Another problem that I've noticed, and this might draw fire, is that some
web designers try to use dark backgrounds thinking that it spruces up an
otherwise mediocre design. They like the way images and large text jumps out
and glows against a dark background, not understanding that this same
"jumping out" and "glowing" makes the smaller text so tedious to read. Take
a look at such freebie sites as Geocities and Tripod and see all the goofy
personal sites done with black, navy or starfield backgrounds. If you remove
them and all the wild backgrounds, Geocities would close up shop. The
background just won't "kewlize" an otherwise poor design. (I'm speaking
generically, here. I'm not saying that your site is poor at all.)

I suggest that people considering dark backgrounds also consider picture
framing the important textual content using light backgrounds with dark
text.

Craig T. Harding MS
Association of Computing Machinery - ACM
Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers - IEEE
President - GuideNet.Net
(all outbound email scanned by Norton 2002)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Hooloovoo" <hwg(at)hooloovoo.com>
To: <hwg-critique(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2002 2:48 PM
Subject: RE: TE Site Critique Requsted


> On 20 Mar 2002, at 13:23, hwg-critique(at)hyperwebdesign.com wrote:
>
> > White text on a black background is hard on the eyes.  Even by toning it
> > down to a light grey helps alot.
>
> really?  When I set the design I did a quick and dirty poll of about
> 25 people and I couldn't get a uniform answer on what was easier
> to read: black on white, white on black or light gray on black.
> Everyone had a different opinion on the matter.

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