Beautiful backgrounds and readable words pull in opposite directions. The more interesting the texture, the more it competes with the text on top. Most tools solve this with a patch: a translucent box, a shadow behind the letters, or a blurred area that says, very clearly, “text goes here”.
Those patches work, but they cost you the thing you wanted the background for. The box flattens it, the shadow muddies it, the blur makes it look unfinished.
Let the background move, not the words
A Mark knows where your words are. Instead of covering the texture, it rearranges itself: the whole material slides so its calmest, best-contrasting region sits behind the text; near the letters, colours deepen under light type and lift under dark type; busy ridges relax. None of it is a shape you can point at. It reads as the design, because it is the design.
Let the ink choose itself
The other half is ink. Set text to Auto and each line picks the light or dark ink that reads best against what’s actually behind it, from a pair drawn from your Mark’s own palette. Move a headline from a bright area to a dark one and it quietly flips.
The best legibility fix is the one nobody notices.
You decide how much the background responds: barely there, balanced, or a clear stage for a headline that has to land.