Dark themes are more than a design fad, they’ve become a permanent part of the mobile device user experience and are similarly commonplace for web design.
The two most recent client projects I launched have featured dark designs: the Emberlight Festival and City Lights Theater Company. There’s a lot to love about dark designs but there’s even more that goes into making them work. Simply put, it’s not just inverting white for black.
For UpStageCRM, we took this a step further and provide the ability for site visitors to select a light or dark version of the site as default functionality.
Do you have any fav arts and culture websites that rock a dark theme design?
The only example I can think of is the Kennedy Center in DC, that went entirely virtual for its program notes, putting them on dark-mode pages on its website (allowing a slightly more interactive experience than a static PDF). They even have a warning pop up if you navigate to another part of their website that says something to the effect of “be mindful of other patrons when navigating to brighter parts of the website while in the performance.”
I use dark mode on Facebook, Twitter, Messages, Calendar, Gmail, all those other platforms I frequent — now I want to know why it’s not as an option on arts and culture websites that want to keep my eyes there in the hope I’ll buy something!
In time, it will become increasingly common but I also think arts orgs will be slow to adopt. I will say it’s more challenging to implement dual light/dark themes on websites as compared to app based platforms. So that alone will increase the implementation lag.
The only example I can think of is the Kennedy Center in DC, that went entirely virtual for its program notes, putting them on dark-mode pages on its website (allowing a slightly more interactive experience than a static PDF). They even have a warning pop up if you navigate to another part of their website that says something to the effect of “be mindful of other patrons when navigating to brighter parts of the website while in the performance.”
I use dark mode on Facebook, Twitter, Messages, Calendar, Gmail, all those other platforms I frequent — now I want to know why it’s not as an option on arts and culture websites that want to keep my eyes there in the hope I’ll buy something!
In time, it will become increasingly common but I also think arts orgs will be slow to adopt. I will say it’s more challenging to implement dual light/dark themes on websites as compared to app based platforms. So that alone will increase the implementation lag.