I love reading white text on a black background.  Who knew?  As some of you may know I was assigned an apple ipad to use.  The ipad was loaded with a copy of Miriam Toews’ book A Complicated Kindness.  I think we are are somewhat familiar with the ipads touch interface from the extensive advertising that the company has put out there. I think that in a tactile sense the unit was as fun and easy to navigate as the adverts would have us believe.

I want to focus here on my experience of ‘reading’ on the ipad.  I found that I read faster right off the bat.  The way my eye scanned across the line and down to the next seemed faster to me.  I found the flick of a finger to turn the page to be not only quick and easy but for some reason satisfying.  I thought I would miss the touch and feel of a book, and if I read this way exclusively I think I would, but the ipad has touch and feel too.

Once I was about a third of the way into the book I found that I could experiment with the typography.  I think this is an essential part of reading a book that has never before been in the control of the reader.  These decisions have always been made for us by someone else.  Two simple variables, font size and font/background colour can have a huge impact on the reading experience.

Font size has traditionally offered readers two choices, regular and large.  The experience of reading on the ipad offers a much more fine gradation. There is a difference in reading at 10 pt and 14 pt.  I think the experience of certain books that bear a slower more considered reading could be reinforce by using a smaller font to cause the reader to linger on the page.  This kind of idea is taking reader response theory out of the mind of the reader and giving the reader concrete methods to construct the text for themselves, literally.  I am intrigued by this idea and would like to open it up to discussion in class at some point.  If the text’s meaning is created in the space between author and reader, what does it do to the dynamic to transfer the physical look of the text on the page from the author/creator side to the reader/creator side?

As an extension of these thoughts I found myself experimenting with reading white text on a black background.  First let me say that I was reading faster.  I found the contrast of the letters on the background made it extremely fast for my eyes to track from word to word and line to line.  I think this makes sense given that our yes are drawn to light, and that we rarely look into light looking for the negative space.  It strikes me as I write this that of course we do this every day on our computers, but I would like to know if there is a greater visual acuity and accuracy in picking up light against a dark background? I would argue from my limited experience and unscientific reflection that there is.

Lastly I want to suggest the font/background option as a future source of symbolism.  How long before a book is released where instead of the author telling you that it is night, they simply switch to a black background.  How long before night darkness black evil ….. as symbols are evoked in this way.  I don’t think it will be long.

Here is another soldier in the white text black background revolution. This is from the Blackle project.

How is Blackle saving energy?

Blackle was created by Heap Media to remind us all of the need to take small steps in our everyday lives to save energy. Blackle searches are powered by Google Custom Search.

Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. “Image displayed is primarily a function of the user’s color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen.” Roberson et al, 2002

In January 2007 a blog post titled Black Google Would Save 750 Megawatt-hours a Year proposed the theory that a black version of the Google search engine would save a fair bit of energy due to the popularity of the search engine. Since then there has been skepticism about the significance of the energy savings that can be achieved and the cost in terms of readability of black web pages.

We believe that there is value in the concept because even if the energy savings are small, they all add up. Secondly we feel that seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.

How can you help?

We encourage you to set Blackle as your home page. This way every time you load your Internet browser you will save a little bit of energy. Remember every bit counts! You will also be reminded about the need to save energy each time you see the Blackle page load.