What are you looking at?

I'm not sure you're seeing what you should be seeing. Designers spend a lot of time trying to get color palettes to match brand identities, making sure images are color corrected to client standards and designing sites to look their best on certain monitor sizes. Unfortunately, it's becoming increasingly apparent, this is all for naught. So where should you be? What should you be seeing? All I can tell you is what I think and what we design for.

If you want to adjust some of this: PC users, open your screen setting by right clicking on the desktop and selecting "Properties", then click the "Settings" tab. Mac users, click on your "System Preferences" in the dock and select "Displays".

Color Depth/Quality: If the option is available, you should be at 32-bit. This offers you the millions of colors everyone has been talking about. Each one is special in it's own special way.

Screen Resolution: There are too many schools of thought on this. Frankly, if your on a 15" screen, greater resolutions will guarantee blindness. Most web sites nowadays look their best on 1024x768 resolutions. This is where the majority of people are at, and its a good start. Better, however, is greater. I'm currently set at 1280x1024. I see everything, and the text size is manageable. Don't forget that many of the programs that you use, that require you to read text, will have zoom options. Furthermore, a solid browser will have text zooming options as well. Ultimately screen resolution comes down to what you are most comfortable with.

Brightness/Contrast: Since I can't see though your eyes I can only give you an idea of what you should be seeing. What we are looking for is a nice full spectrum of black to white. Take a look at this:

If you raise your brightness up to 100%, you should see 2 distinct boxes. Lower your brightness until the center box is barely distinguishable from the larger black box. Your monitor should be showing richer dark colors and brighter whites.

You should see a nice spectrum of color below with 21 bars. (bars 1 & 2 will be pretty darn close)

Your contrast should be 100%.

This is a good start. There are more calibrations you can make: for red, blue and green balance. But I don't want to go into those. For Mac users, I know you have an option to run through a calibration tutorial, and I highly recommend it. [via June]

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