Make an object black. Apply black to an object.

Black objects are formal, foreboding, somber, and/or mysterious. Most people associate black with death or (perhaps not unrelated) with formal dress. It’s the night and the darkness of an abyss or void. Blackness steals light. It’s a gothic celebration of gloom. Blackening plays on fear. Think of the sinister, E-minor chord and lyrics for the Rolling Stones Paint It Black.

Following the death of lead singer Bon Scott in 1980, ACDC released Back in Black. Dedicated to Scott, it became the band’s best selling album (49 million copies). The record cover is appropriately (if not infamously and predictably) black and features spare typography—the band’s logo in thin, white outline and the album name in Times Roman capitals.

Back in Black album cover. Bob Defrin (Art Director), 1980.

In the photo essay “A Winter Tale” from 2wice magazine, one member of the Parsons Dance Company is provocatively “blackened”, in stark contrast to the other dancers (who are “whitened”) and the snowy landscape in which he’s photographed. Nancy Dalva of 2wice writes:

“What is this darkling creature who creeps among us, eyes aglow? Benign? Malign? Predator? Protector? Make of him what you will, whenever your eyes close, his open. Aprowl between conscious and subconscious, waking and sleeping, he’s the man of our dreams.”

Photo from “A Winter Tale”, 2wice magazine. Abbott Miller (Designer), 2003.