07/11/2017
Of all the sites I've developed over the past several months I keep coming back to Black Sands as my favorite. From the logo to the dark colors scheme and the bold use of orange as an accent color; considering especially how dark greys and black play its counter part.
Dark design is thought to be one of the more difficult palettes to work with. There are hundreds of thousands of terrible dark designs to make this point. Because blacks and greys are color neutral, and any other color will contrast beautifully, a dark design has the potential to be a striking, if not elegant theme. The design is going to have impact, but will it turn off the website visitor?
When web users have been polled on the subject of light vs. dark designs, the large majority, 47% prefer light when asked to consider Always Light, Always Dark, Depends on the Blog and or I don't Care Either Way. (Link at the end of the article). It comes down to readability. Technically, more contrast results in more readability,
ERGO black text on white background becomes the norm. But can't we find just as much contrast where one has white text on a black background? I'd say you get the contrast but personally I find the starkness of white text on a black background hard on the 'ol peepers.
Whos right, the dark or the light? At the end of the day (sorry Jan Baby), everyone has their own opinion, an inescapable truth. But with such a large percentage of users saying that dark website designs are tolerable and sometimes even preferred, we as web designers have to learn how to create effective dark designs for ourselves and our clients. It is a known fact among developers that dark designs can in fact score high on readability indices but too look like crap when poorly executed.
For my design, I introduced several shades of dark grey and complemented those with texture. My text is not white ( ) but instead if off-white ( ). For the accent color orange, I cheated and used two subtle shades, drifting towards the red zone. Finally, the logo. That was me being idiot savant. I've created some great logos over the years and this ranks up there in my top ten.
Check it out. If you are a developer, feel free to steal my great ideas - but not my logo!
https://blacksandsmt.com
Philip W. Little, an international security expert, was approached and asked to create a security program for a mining group in Mexico. This was not unusual since he had over 35 years of security experience in Mexico alone. But this time, after the due diligence was completed, Mr. Little realized th...
