Black

A black case is usually chosen for the wrong reason — that it is safe — and it is the most interesting ground in the range for a reason that has nothing to do with safety. Black absorbs rather than reflects, so the only thing the eye reads on a solid black case is the shape: two halves, a hinge line, a raised camera bar, a radius at each corner.

On a phone that folds, that is a genuinely unusual silhouette, and black is the only ground that lets you see it. Every other colour competes with it.

What black does to a print

It inverts the logic. On a pale ground a print is something added to a surface; on black the ground disappears and the print becomes the object. Nightshade is built the way a seventeenth-century still life is built — black ground, one light source, most of the arrangement left in shadow — and it is the only floral in the range that is genuinely loud.

The same is true of Cherry-dark animal prints and of Constellation, where the ground stops being a colour and starts being a night sky.

Against a polished frame

The iPhone Duo’s frame is mirror-polished titanium, and a black case is the only ground that lets it stay the brightest thing on the object. Every other colour competes with the metal for attention; black hands it over. If the reason you chose this phone is the way the frame looks, a black case is the one that agrees with you.

It is also the only ground where the raised camera bar reads as a deliberate piece of geometry rather than as a bump.

The practical argument

Black is the most forgiving surface here. Fine scuffing that would show on ivory or oat disappears into it, and marks from denim do not transfer visibly at all. If you have had a pale case and returned to a dark one, that is why.

Ink is the plainest of them — a dense matte black with nothing printed on it — and it is the most honest case we make.