From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

Unlock this course with a free trial

Join today to access over 24,700 courses taught by industry experts.

02 Ensure good contrast between text and background

02 Ensure good contrast between text and background

From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

02 Ensure good contrast between text and background

“

- Law 2. Ensure good contrast between text and background. When you're creating documents that are meant to be read, you want to make sure that the text is legible. And all that means, legible text is clear and easy to read. So a really important aspect of text legibility, is the amount of contrast between the text and background. And so what exactly does contrast mean? Contrast is simply the difference between two colors. And colors can be different in a lot of different ways. We're going to focus on differences in lightness and darkness. Because these differences have the biggest effect on text legibility. Here's an example of high contrast between text and background. And here we've got black text on a white background. Black and white provide the highest possible contrast. And that's because white is the lightest color, and black is the darkest color. So this high contrast makes it really easy to see the difference between the text and background. And that helps make this text…

Contents