A good reason to break "Use near-black and near-white instead of pure black and white" for blacks is if the design will be viewed either on a projector, or with an an OLED screen as both will display pure blacks quite pleasingly.
I suspect the designers with their near white and near black to have superior monitors that are capable of more contrast than regular users. Ironically my cheap monitor automatically converts pure black and white to near.
My understanding is professional designers use color-calibrated monitors, which unfortunately have nothing to do with the actual monitors and screens most people actually use to view content.
Designers monitors' are calibrated to perfectly match a cheap 90s CRT (sRGB, Rec. 709, 200 nits brightness). Sadly, most cheap modern LCD screens are far worse in contrast and color gamut than 90s CRTs.
I thought the no-pure white/black was due to human visual perception. That neither occurs in nature and they seem fake/artificial to the viewer. Nothing about how good it looks on the medium.
Very true. This is more coming from print media where you can get closer to true colors. This might be one of those things that needs a tweak when translating between mediums. Much like optimal line length.
Sadly we're still in the past when it comes to displays to be used outdoors, but if you compare a Kindle in sunlight, the white background is probably an order of magnitude brighter than any normal computer or telephone screen.
"Don't use pure black for text" or "don't use a pure white background" are total myths among designers. You'll never have anything close to a pure color on current display technology.
