Contrast is Very Important

You've all seen it before. Even worse, you may be guilty of doing it yourself. It is one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to good visual design, and probably one of the most common. Placing dark text on a dark background (or vise versa) creates low contrast and will make your presentation impossible to read from across the room. Even worse, it shows a lack of care and poor attention to detail.



"I'm not a designer, so it doesn't matter what my presentation looks like."

Oh yes it does. Low contrast between your text and background graphics says a lot about the person giving the presentation. If your presentation looks cluttered, messy, and difficult to read, chances are that you are giving off the same vibe as well.
Three quick tips to achieve high contrast

1). Basically, it comes down to this: if you have to ask yourself if your text is too dark (or light) for your background, it usually is. In that case, replace the elements that are causing problems with something less problematic. This might mean that you'll have to give up your favorite graphic, or switch to a font color that isn't your first choice. Once you identify which element is the most important, choosing what to change should be very easy. Don't be stubborn.

2). Choose background images that have an even tone. If you are placing text over top of a complex image with massive variations in dark and light areas, it's probably not going to work very well. It's very important not to get too narrow-minded about this - forcing incompatible images and text to work teacher is a waste of time because even if you think it looks acceptable, chances are it doesn't. Furthermore, "acceptable" is a bad word when it comes to presentation design. To convey your information as clearly possible, high contrast and quick readability are key. The overall contrast of your presentation should be "good" or "great" - and not just "acceptable".

You could also consider modifying the background image to create clean spaces for text, as shown in this example:


3). As a rule, a blue background under black text is the worst possible color combination you could create. The human eye has difficulty separating blues from blacks, and it will make your presentation difficult to read. If you must use a blue background (like so many people like to do), choose a white or light gray font instead.
Is there such a thing as too much contrast?

Absolutely. If you want your audience to be able to read your document as easily as possible, you should avoid light fonts over dark backgrounds. It's ok for small amounts of text, but many paragraphs of white text over a dark background creates an immense amount of eye strain. Sure, it looks good - as designers, we at TemplateGraphix like this combination quite a bit (for example, the page you are reading now). However, we know the issues it can cause, so it's not something we recommend. Although a hypocritial statement, think of it as an important lesson; if you having difficulty reading this web page, you can easily understand why you would not want to use this type of color combination and contrast in your own designs.