I hadn’t realized this was a trend, until recently. Apparently, a lot of people new to the world of design have fallen for this fallacy. They’ve heard it somewhere or other that it is a bad idea to use black in their designs.
Ian Storm Taylor maps out the thinking behind this movement….
https://ianstormtaylor.com/design-tip-never-use-black/
There are lots of great points here, but “never” is a bit extreme (I know hyperbole rules the headlines of our times).
A similar thread goes along the lines that Monet never used black, so neither should you. Monet, was a fantastic impressionist painter, who wanted to emphasise the richness of tones in shadows and contrating lighter areas, and thought that black dulled these sensations, and his paintings benefitted from this philosophy.
Monet was not a print designer nor a web designer, though I’m sure he would have been very capable.
Anders Zorn, also contemporary of Monet’s painting in Sweeden, use a very limited palette for many of his paintings, consisting of only yellow, red, white and BLACK. He created greens from mixing yellow and black. All of the blues of the sky and water were in fact shades of gray. The lack of a true blue adjacent to all those other mixed warm colors makes our eyes (or brains) see the cool grays as blue. Try it some time. It’s freeing to paint with only limited choices. Really.
Black has also been a staple of print design throughout the ages. Consider it’s importance in Lissitzky’s posters. To say “never use black” sounds as absurd as saying “never use red” or white, or any other color. (Don’t start me on the subject of black and white not being actually colors. We’ll get into that in another write up).
Paul Andrew at Speckboy.com has rounded up some contemporty examples…
https://speckyboy.com/black-web-design/
Another Andrew, Kelsall, has spelled out the various types of black designers use, and some common pitfalls…
http://www.andrewkelsall.com/the-professional-designers-guide-to-using-black/