Designing in Dark: What You Should Know

The first visually striking element of dark designing is its mysterious elegance and appeal. The visual impression of dark designs is very effective for many websites, especially those that focus more on visual elements and rely less on text to appeal to the visitor.

Due to darkness of the site, it can often be less appealing, especially since there is less text or unreadable text to view. This type of design should only be used when and where it's appropriate and used to make a striking first impression that encourages visitors to stay on the page to see more. Some things that you can do to your dark designed site to make it more appealing include:

1. Using more white space for visual appeal.

Very often, dark designs tend to feel and look heavy due to the absence of light. Instead of shrouding and covering the entire site in black (or white), be creative in shading and contrasting the white space for better results. Areas of gray text or bold, white lettering can be quite effective on dark sites.

2. Creating textual white space by adjusting the paragraph's size, spacing, kerning and leading

This will help significantly because it's easier on the eyes to read the text and to follow along the page. Smaller and tighter fonts close the eyes while bigger fonts makes the person eyes widen and absorb the text better. Letter spacing and leadingwill also help to soften the text somewhat and help to make it flow better with the reader while he's on the site. If there is too much squinting requiredfor the reader to be on your site, you run the risk of the visitor becoming frustrated and clicking away.

3. Creating a contrasting background withdark design sites, making them visually more appealing and morepresentable.

A contrasting background can be in shades of blended dark colors or gray — whichever best fits the sites personality and style. This can be tested by combining the font's color and size against a contrasting background to see what effect it has at first glimpse. The first impression is always the lasting one!

4. Using fonts that are easily legible, not necessarily stylish or fun.

While using funky fonts may be very important to some designers, and this can certainly be adjusted, ensure that the font is readable so that visitors won't get frustrated and click away. Serif fonts and sans fonts are very popular for this reason because they're often clean, bold and well-defined. Be careful of strong fonts that are thick and big, as they will not visually present well and may even make the site appear amateurish.

Showcase: 10 Awesome Dark Designs:

1. DesignThis: Stylish dark portfolio and a blog

2. Anderbose: A great way to attract attention to the header and visualize the tagline (the header does seem to look "inside"):

3. MAQUINA: Another great examples of using light properly when designing in dark:

4. Product Planner: Awesome combination of dark and green colors

5. Sexy Social Media: Red and black combines in a stylish way

6. Matt Ooley: Minimal background highlighting interactive content navigation

7. Jason Stockman: Purely minimalist dark design

8. Aleberry Creative: Effective combination of Dark and Purple

09. Nue Media: Dark black-and-white photography as background

10. Neil Nand: Various combinations of dark pattens

With these tips and advice, you can design your dark website to appeal to a very broad and diverse audience without the risk of losing their attention. It gives the designer the opportunity to creatively express their skills, sharpen and ignite their creativity and produce a genuinely appealing product for mass appeal.