Reading the Writing on the Wall(paper)

With the release of iOS 7, I’ve been hearing lots of muttering about how hard the home screens are to read with new system font (a variant of Helvetica Neue). While I do agree that the new font is slender and not particularly friendly to older eyes, I suspect much of the problem has to do with the wallpapers that people are putting on their home screens.

Here’s the thing: If you choose a bright, highly textured wallpaper image, like the image shown here, you’ll have a real problem.
Bad wallpaper choice

But, if you choose or create a wallpaper image that is relatively dark with few or no highlights, like this one here, the icon labels are much easier to read, and the color bleed-through in Notification Center and Control Center is much reduced.
Better wallpaper choice