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You'd have a really interesting conversation with an artist or designer if you asked, "What is the correct color for text?" instead of uh, just saying that the

You'd have a really interesting conversation with an artist or designer if you asked, "What is the correct color for text?" instead of uh, just saying that the answer is whatever your computer draws as RGB #000. That's part of what this article gives you, why it's talking about art school and not technology. Miscommunication - incommensurability of how to see the world really - is the pitfall when engineers are tasked with creating a subjective thing and asked to try to do something simultaneously functional, familiar and original. Just put yourself in this guys shoes. Just like you are excited to share Linux display color control commands, this guy is excited to share a new way of thinking about black and dark shades that instantly expands your vocabulary - both for creating new things and understanding the decisions of others. Anyway, the negativity of others in this thread, it's ironic because that's exactly the point of the article, really, that the pedantry gets in the way of being creative - or at the very least, seeing things originally. I work with an artist daily. I appreciate and value his opinions that there should be no pure black in the creative product we make together. It elevates what we make above all our competitors. It's an extremely insightful perspective.

mrob 6y ago
I don't see why I should care about the opinion of designers when they're the ones responsible for such anti-features as vanishing scrollbars and hamburger menus. RGB #000 isn't truly black, but it's always the best approximation of black available on a computer monitor.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  To be fair, we engineers also have plenty of UI war crimes to answer for :)
  - kbutler 6y ago
    But do we claim to be the experts, authorities, and judges of UI design? Well, ok, sometimes we do, but...yeah.
    - tingol 6y ago
      The smarter ones usually iterate based on user input.
      - a1369209993 6y ago
        To be fair, the smarter designers do too, but you don't hear about them because good design doesn't shove itself in your proverbial or literal face.
      - notatoad 6y ago
        and some of the designs that you don't personally like were undoubtedly the result of iterating based on user input - what actually tests well with users is very often not what the sort of people who post on hacker news would assume is the best design.
        IggleSniggle 6y ago
        Yeah, just to add: and some designs come out of relentless targeting the impact of the bottom line at the expense of aesthetic or "pleasurable to use", some designs come out of snake-oil sales-people, etc etc. Different populations, different needs/wants/desires/cultural expectations. This is what focused advertising is all about. You can create one interface and say "everyone must use and learn to love this one," and that can work well. You can also gain immediate appeal by creating "one interface for each population of potential users" and relentlessly target your designs for each of those populations. I don't think we've fully recognized it in software engineering circles, but I think a lot of what are producing today is really about creating different experiences for different populations when the core capabilities have been there, available for free or on extremely cheap computing platforms, for anyone to use, for decades. I imagine that's fundamentally what the job of most software engineers is today: find the design that best matches the needs of the customer, and build a workflow for their needs.
  - Kaze404 6y ago
    Not just UI crimes either. I know of at least one that lost a company a couple hundred thousand due to clever engineering.
- yowlingcat 6y ago
  There's no need to care about their opinions, but what's being talked about here is not opinion. They're basic principles of color theory that have remain unchanged for centuries if not millennia. They became principles because they work. What do you think is more likely to be incorrect -- the millennia old principles, or your unsubstantiated, untrained opinion? I agree with your chagrin for vanishing scrollbars and hamburger menus, by the way. There ought to be a good term for designers who do the opposite of what good design does (which is make things which are usable).
- baddox 6y ago
  You’re asking why you should care about opinions that are different than your opinions?
- gnulinux 6y ago
  What's wrong with vanishing scrollbar? I prefer them this way. The first thing my emacs config file does is to hide scrollbar.
  - ryukafalz 6y ago
    Mine too, but I’m already familiar enough with Emacs that I don’t need it, and in general most things in Emacs are scrollable and you can recognize them as such once you’ve used it for a while. It would not be the right choice for a default config, or in a context where sometimes things are scrollable and sometimes they aren’t. (This is often the case on mobile phones; if there’s no scroll bar, the only way to tell if something is scrollable is to try it, if you think to.)
  - sporkologist 6y ago
    It adds to cognitive load, now I have to hunt for the frickin scrollbar... mystery-meat UI if you ask me.
  - mrob 6y ago
    It makes me waste valuable working memory remembering my position in the document, and the animation of it appearing and disappearing is distracting. I have a widescreen monitor so I have plenty of horizontal space already.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      Even though I agree with you re: pure black text, I sense a lack of understanding that should be present here. Design is always a trade off. Do you want more focus on content, or more information with less focus? Is your default setting more friendly to smaller or larger screens? Every person has different preferences, and every trade off has cost benefits you can run. Yet your statement here is very “black and white” (ahem), assuming everyone should think like you. That betrays a lack of nuance in understanding how design works. In the programming world, you also have these trade offs, yet it’s easier to avoid thinking about them at times. Static vs dynamic languages are full of trade offs like this. To avoid coming across as yelling at clouds, attempt to frame why it’s a trade off you prefer, rather than a platonic ideal others don’t see (because it isn’t).
msla 6y ago
> I appreciate and value his opinions that there should be no pure black in the creative product we make together. Is this why the most fashionable websites are also the most difficult to read? I ask purely for information.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  Instagram's text color, the first but not the last I'll check, is "rgb(38, 38, 38)." I wouldn't characterize it harder to read than this website, which uses "rgb(0, 0, 0)", or easier to read than the NYTimes (the third), which uses "rgb(85, 85, 85)." Anyway, I would hardly characterize those as fashionable, they are some of the portals on the Internet. So maybe you're talking about a different site, or something, but certainly, among the most mainstream sites, there is a consensus to not use pure black in the font.
- httpsterio 6y ago
  Aesthetic design and usable design are very different things. If the sites you're talking about are made by people who care more about making things look nice instead of being usable, then yeah that would be the issue. WCAG2.1 has some great guidelines when it comes to color contrast in digital text and as long as those are adhered to, most people will have a near optimal experience consuming that text. And yes, too big of a contrast difference is not great either. Just try to throw bright yellow on top of a black background, it's gonna hurt your eyes pretty quick.

mrob 6y ago

I don't see why I should care about the opinion of designers when they're the ones responsible for such anti-features as vanishing scrollbars and hamburger menus. RGB #000 isn't truly black, but it's always the best approximation of black available on a computer monitor.

BurningFrog 6y ago
To be fair, we engineers also have plenty of UI war crimes to answer for :)
- kbutler 6y ago
  But do we claim to be the experts, authorities, and judges of UI design? Well, ok, sometimes we do, but...yeah.
  - tingol 6y ago
    The smarter ones usually iterate based on user input.
    - a1369209993 6y ago
      To be fair, the smarter designers do too, but you don't hear about them because good design doesn't shove itself in your proverbial or literal face.
    - notatoad 6y ago
      and some of the designs that you don't personally like were undoubtedly the result of iterating based on user input - what actually tests well with users is very often not what the sort of people who post on hacker news would assume is the best design.
      - IggleSniggle 6y ago
        Yeah, just to add: and some designs come out of relentless targeting the impact of the bottom line at the expense of aesthetic or "pleasurable to use", some designs come out of snake-oil sales-people, etc etc. Different populations, different needs/wants/desires/cultural expectations. This is what focused advertising is all about. You can create one interface and say "everyone must use and learn to love this one," and that can work well. You can also gain immediate appeal by creating "one interface for each population of potential users" and relentlessly target your designs for each of those populations. I don't think we've fully recognized it in software engineering circles, but I think a lot of what are producing today is really about creating different experiences for different populations when the core capabilities have been there, available for free or on extremely cheap computing platforms, for anyone to use, for decades. I imagine that's fundamentally what the job of most software engineers is today: find the design that best matches the needs of the customer, and build a workflow for their needs.
- Kaze404 6y ago
  Not just UI crimes either. I know of at least one that lost a company a couple hundred thousand due to clever engineering.
yowlingcat 6y ago
There's no need to care about their opinions, but what's being talked about here is not opinion. They're basic principles of color theory that have remain unchanged for centuries if not millennia. They became principles because they work. What do you think is more likely to be incorrect -- the millennia old principles, or your unsubstantiated, untrained opinion? I agree with your chagrin for vanishing scrollbars and hamburger menus, by the way. There ought to be a good term for designers who do the opposite of what good design does (which is make things which are usable).
baddox 6y ago
You’re asking why you should care about opinions that are different than your opinions?
gnulinux 6y ago
What's wrong with vanishing scrollbar? I prefer them this way. The first thing my emacs config file does is to hide scrollbar.
- ryukafalz 6y ago
  Mine too, but I’m already familiar enough with Emacs that I don’t need it, and in general most things in Emacs are scrollable and you can recognize them as such once you’ve used it for a while. It would not be the right choice for a default config, or in a context where sometimes things are scrollable and sometimes they aren’t. (This is often the case on mobile phones; if there’s no scroll bar, the only way to tell if something is scrollable is to try it, if you think to.)
- sporkologist 6y ago
  It adds to cognitive load, now I have to hunt for the frickin scrollbar... mystery-meat UI if you ask me.
- mrob 6y ago
  It makes me waste valuable working memory remembering my position in the document, and the animation of it appearing and disappearing is distracting. I have a widescreen monitor so I have plenty of horizontal space already.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Even though I agree with you re: pure black text, I sense a lack of understanding that should be present here. Design is always a trade off. Do you want more focus on content, or more information with less focus? Is your default setting more friendly to smaller or larger screens? Every person has different preferences, and every trade off has cost benefits you can run. Yet your statement here is very “black and white” (ahem), assuming everyone should think like you. That betrays a lack of nuance in understanding how design works. In the programming world, you also have these trade offs, yet it’s easier to avoid thinking about them at times. Static vs dynamic languages are full of trade offs like this. To avoid coming across as yelling at clouds, attempt to frame why it’s a trade off you prefer, rather than a platonic ideal others don’t see (because it isn’t).

msla 6y ago

> I appreciate and value his opinions that there should be no pure black in the creative product we make together. Is this why the most fashionable websites are also the most difficult to read? I ask purely for information.

an_opabinia 6y ago
Instagram's text color, the first but not the last I'll check, is "rgb(38, 38, 38)." I wouldn't characterize it harder to read than this website, which uses "rgb(0, 0, 0)", or easier to read than the NYTimes (the third), which uses "rgb(85, 85, 85)." Anyway, I would hardly characterize those as fashionable, they are some of the portals on the Internet. So maybe you're talking about a different site, or something, but certainly, among the most mainstream sites, there is a consensus to not use pure black in the font.
httpsterio 6y ago
Aesthetic design and usable design are very different things. If the sites you're talking about are made by people who care more about making things look nice instead of being usable, then yeah that would be the issue. WCAG2.1 has some great guidelines when it comes to color contrast in digital text and as long as those are adhered to, most people will have a near optimal experience consuming that text. And yes, too big of a contrast difference is not great either. Just try to throw bright yellow on top of a black background, it's gonna hurt your eyes pretty quick.