The influence of brightness combinations and background colour on legibility and subjective preference under negative polarity

Abstract

This study explores the influence of colour combinations on legibility and aesthetic feelings for the currently popular negative polarity interface design. Legibility was measured in two different ways in two tasks: time threshold (Task I) and a 9-point subjective rating (Task II). In Task I, we combined an adaptive program to measure 37 participants’ recognition thresholds and online pseudo-word recognition tasks; in Task II, 44 participants’ subjective preferences were measured using a scale. We found that higher brightness contrasts led to better legibility; different background colours with identical brightness and saturation did not cause significant differences; brighter texts produced better subjective preference for aesthetic appearance, legibility, and visual comfort; and different background colours had no significant effect on subjective preference. These findings have implications for digital interface design.

Practitioner summary: In display design under negative polarity, experimental results show that higher brightness contrast leads to higher legibility, while background colour has no such significant effect; background brightness and hue have no significant effect on subjective preference, but text brightness and background colour have significant interaction effect on subjective preference.

Abbreviations: OLED: organic light-emitting diode; LCD: liquid crystal display; ANOVA: analysis of variance; VDT: visual displsy terminal; CET-4: college english test band 4; ISO: International Organization for Standardization; HSB: hues saturation brightness

Keywords:

• Negative polarity
• background colour
• legibility
• subjective preference
• digital display interface

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all the participants for their support during the experiment. We also extend our gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable suggestions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under [Grant No. 51875399], the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin City under [Grant No. 19JCYBJC19500], and Tianjin Technical Expert Project Fund under [Grant No.19JPTCJP45100].