Shades of Gray
Do you think it really matters what shade you choose for the text in your white paper? Does jet black text provide greater readability than gray or perhaps even blue? One blogger seems to think so.
From the CommonSense Design blog, a post entitled “Whatever happened to black ink?”, the blogger points out that the color of the text you choose decreases eye-strain and increases the reading experience:
“Lately, I notice a worrying trend as I browse the shelves in the bookstores I frequent. A small but growing number of books are published in all sorts of smart-aleck color schemes. Ignoring the ones on colored paper – where the color schemes are intentionally artsy – we see books in gray ink, blue ink, brownish ink, all on white paper. And not just a sidebar or special page; the entire book is printed this way, as if the publisher said to himself “Hmmm… how can I improve the reading experience? Ah! Let’s use a lower contrast ink than we might. Sure, gray ink may cost more than the standard black, but what’s a little money compared to the pleasure of giving my readers eye strain headaches?”
Now to be quite honest, I really haven’t considered the color of the text as a factor in the reading experience of a white paper. Typically, with a graphically-designed white paper, the color of the text has a lot to do with other elements such as border treatments, heading colors, or concept graphics.
But the blogger makes a lot of sense. If you had to read a 10-page white paper that had light gray text, wouldn’t you experience eye-strain after a few pages? Unfortunately, I’ve run across a few white papers that use this technique. Most employ that good old basic black.
So to answer the blogger’s question: “What ever happened to black ink?” Well, for white papers at least, it never went away. Let’s face it. White paper writers have a difficult enough challenge getting complex concepts across to the reader in a few short pages. Let’s not further complicate the process by using a text color that turns the reader off as well.
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March 25th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
True – mercifully, I do’;t recall seeing any white papers in other than black ink. Let’s keep it that way…
March 26th, 2008 at 6:25 am
Hi Nathan,
Unfortunately, I have seen my share of them. It’s true when you read one with light gray text, you tend to get eye strain pretty quickly.
Thanks,
Jonathan
March 26th, 2008 at 7:45 am
It would be interesting if someone did a survey on this. I tend not to like 100% black, because it seems too stark against a white background — especially on electronic documents. Although light grey is definitely inappropriate, I find that 90-95% black is a little easier on the eyes (my eyes anyway) and even, perhaps, elegant. This is even more noticeable in headers and bolded text.
~Graham
March 26th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Hi Graham,
It’s interesting that you find a difference with 90-95% black as opposed to 100%. I have to try that one out.
Thanks for the tip!
Jonathan
March 26th, 2008 at 7:58 am
I agree, on a computer screen dark gray works well enough, and is indeed often elegant (hey, my own above-quoted post uses this scheme…) As to hard copy on paper, black is still king IMHO… and certainly not a problem, we’ve been using it all our life after all.