Light and dark themes in Publish by Zaweba

Light or dark is partly a matter of taste and partly a matter of the hour. A bright window suits a sunny afternoon at the kitchen table, and a dark one is easier on the eyes late in the evening when the newsletter has to be finished before tomorrow. Publish by Zaweba comes with both, a light theme and a dark theme.

The themes come from the shared Zaweba core, the common foundation the Zaweba apps are built on. That means the look and feel is consistent across the apps that share it, so if you've chosen dark in one Zaweba app, the same kind of dark window feels familiar when you open Publish.

What a theme changes

A theme is about the window around your work: the menus, panels, toolbars and the area outside the page. It's the frame, not the picture. Your publication's own colours are a separate thing. They come from the document palette of named colours and from the colour and font schemes in the Format menu, and they're what gets printed or exported.

Keeping that distinction in mind avoids a common worry. Switching to the dark theme doesn't make your flyer dark, and switching back doesn't change it either. A white page with black text is still a white page with black text, whichever theme surrounds it.

Judging colour on screen

The theme can change how colours on the page appear to you, even though it doesn't change the colours themselves. Our eyes judge colour against what's around it. A pale yellow box can look brighter against a dark window and slightly duller against a light one. A soft grey may seem almost white on a dark background.

So for colour decisions that matter, such as choosing a scheme for a shop's menus or matching a club's colours, it's worth looking at the page in both themes, or at least checking the result in an exported PDF or a print. That isn't a flaw in either theme; it's simply how people see colour, and checking in more than one setting gives you a fairer view.

Choosing the one that suits you

There's no right answer. Some people prefer light for daytime work because it feels closer to paper, and so the page doesn't look like a bright rectangle floating in the dark. Others prefer dark for long sessions, because a bright interface around a mostly white page can feel glaring after a few hours. Try both for a while and keep whichever lets you concentrate on the layout rather than the window.

Room lighting plays its part. In a bright room a dark theme can make the screen harder to read, and in a dim room a light theme can be tiring. If you work at different times of day, it's perfectly reasonable to switch.

Where it fits in the app

The theme is one of a handful of settings that shape how Publish feels rather than what it makes. Alongside it sit things like installing for your own account and sending feedback. None of them change your publications, which is how it should be. You can adjust the app to suit you without worrying about the work inside it.

Publish by Zaweba is meant to be a comfortable place to make flyers, newsletters and cards, and a theme that's kind to your eyes is part of that. Pick the one you like, and get back to the page.