Glare of white 100% backgrounds and how it affects fonts

jaimes

I noticed recently that the people at Tiro Typeworks use a very muted background (#e3e5e1) in their editable font samples.

And experimenting in my own website with muted off-white backgrounds, I noticed with surprise that the letters appeared darker with the muted background instead of 100% white.
I'm using #efede2 now in my sites and in my programming text editor, and I think they're much more readable.

I notice especially with serif fonts. For serif fonts, with muted background, the letterforms appear "fuller" if it makes sens. Sometimes the stems get a bit washed out over 100% white background.

I realize that this is probably highly machine dependent, and person dependent, but, I don't think it should be surprising, in retrospect:
I checked the Spiekermann book (3rd ed) and there's a page about font adjustments to compensate for light text on dark background, and especially when the light text is actually illuminated from behind.
And this is exactly the converse of computer screens, no?

Do other people notice this? Are there recommendations for screens? (I have found some web designer sites calling for off-white, but nothing formal). And, is there a technical name for this?

Jacques Le Bailly

I use a slightly off-white background in glyphs when designing type.

John Hudson

Erik Van Blokland explained this very well recently, in the context of signage lettering:

When rays of light hit your cornea, and then your lens, through the soup of the vitreous body, and finally upsetting a photoreceptor in your retina, at every step the ray diffracts, it spreads a little. Only light does that. Darkness is the absence of light, it is created and noticed in your brain. It has no physical properties. So: light always gets bigger.

Dark shapes on a light background? The light will eat them and they shrink. Light shapes on a dark background: they appear bigger.

In FontLab, I set my background colour to a cream colour, emulating a nice warm paper.

Kent Lew

Mohawk Superfine, nice. 😉