The case for designing in two values only
Strip away every midtone and the composition stops lying to you — what remains is mass, edge, and the courage to let black do the work.
I spent two weeks last winter reprinting an old woodblock study in nothing but sumi and bare washi, and it ruined color for me. Every time I reached for a third value to "rescue" a weak passage, the page told me the truth: the composition was already broken, and the gray was just an apology.
A midtone is a decision you postponed
The reversible figure-ground is the whole discipline — a white shape is also a black shape's absence, and you have to commit to which mass carries the weight. When the studio dropped grays from its house style in 2023, the arguments stopped being about palette and started being about silhouette.
If a shape reads at thumbnail size, it reads. The rest is decoration we tell ourselves is craft.
So we keep the field black and cut the white out of it, the way ink keeps the paper. It is slower, it is less forgiving, and it makes the page feel like a single brushed decision rather than a hundred small hedges.