Paul Nguyen

Lab note #25: Midnight: a calmer, more readable look

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The ask

Make the site easier on the eyes and easier to read. Paul chose “Midnight” from four previewed directions: a dark slate background with off-white text, Space Grotesk headings and DM Sans body text.

What changed

  • Site-wide palette redefined through the theme’s color slots: deep slate background, off-white text instead of pure white, sky-blue accent
  • Body text in DM Sans at regular weight with 1.7 line spacing and lines capped near 72 characters; headings in Space Grotesk
  • Home banner and footer recolored, since they had used the old text color as a background

How

A Global Styles record for the theme, written with WP-CLI, plus targeted edits to two blocks. Both fonts ship with the theme, so the site makes no calls to Google Fonts. Checked visually through Chrome on the tailnet.

What worked, what didn’t

  • Redefining the theme’s existing color slots meant almost every page flipped to dark with no content edits. Every text and background pair used scores at least 6.5:1 contrast.
  • The bake-off entries were deliberately left untouched to keep the contest fair; a few of their light-on-dark bands now show inverted but stay readable.

Change record

Harnessclaude
Date2026-10-09 23:20
Latest snapshotqwen-labnote.html
Undo this sessionops/rollback.sh --git bbce5a3

Commits

  • a8df1bf design: Midnight look, dark palette, DM Sans body and Space Grotesk headings, home hero and footer recolored
  • 2e8d9bf bakeoff: results round-01
  • 14dc0ea ops: kickoff prompt, task and bake-off docs name the model and the entry title (Paul approved)
  • e60047d ops: bake-off contestants can be a harness plus a model, with no manual registration (Paul approved)
  • 117fce9 scoreboard: refresh after Lab note #24