How can I convince/prove to others that text over background images is a bad idea?
I'm being pressured to build a feature that would make it easy for users to create web pages that feature large text over large images. Like this:
I am of the strong opinion that this design pattern is problematic for several reasons:
- Big images == big files sizes == bad
- Inevitably leads to someone putting light text on a light image (or vice versa)
- Reinforces the false assumption that everyone has a large screen
I feel like building this feature will encourage people to do this and I'm having trouble convincing other stakeholders that this is a bad idea.
The North Standards have section on Outdated Design patterns; and they're pretty clearly against this:
Large background images add a large amount of weight to a page for very little actual gain
and
Placing text over images should be avoided for variable length text as the combination of the two has a tendency to produce unexpected results and has a high likelihood of obscuring important parts of the image or overrunning and potentially covering the entire image if not well controlled.
The problem with those quotes is that they don't provide any emperical evidence.
There is a similar argument against using carousels. But there are several studies that seem to prove that carousels are a bad idea. See: Carousel Interaction Stats, Rotating Offers: The scourge of home page design, and The rise of the carousel
I guess my question is, are there any emperical studies or authorative resources (besides North) that that support my agrgument? For the sake of argument, are there any resources that say you should put text on images?