It turns out, my mother was right.
My favorite color really is forest green.
And to think all these years I thought it was a healthier grass green. My mother knew it before I did, but I never gave it a thought. I just decided to ignore her.
It was only until years later that her theory was validated. My doctor informed me I was partially color blind.
I recently uncovered a hidden design talent that gives me an ability to see the world differently. I have a partial red-green color blindness (40%).
While we are a minority, most color-blind folk pay little attention to their deficiency—unless you happen to be a designer. It is bad enough trying to make out pantone colors by indoor light. A color blindness handicap makes it even more of an adventure.
Rather than retire with a rousing Lou Gehrig “Luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech, I found a way to use my talent to serve me well. It’s the perspective. When I was told with a solemn and sunken head that “you won’t be able to differentiate between small of differences in reds and greens,” I do confess the whole thing was quite liberating. So my reds will scream. My greens will melt. But really, what is 40% anyway? That’s not even a majority. And this is a democracy, Ladies and Gentlemen. In democracies, a little compromise and error is part of the process.
Is this a problem?
When you are a designer, the devil is in the details. And these are the details, of course, that we are (in)famous for. It is the reason none of our non-designer friends want to go to our parties. We more than sweat the details, they come gushing out of our pores. We meet in bars after work and bring up great kerning stories. We sit around catered lunches like cowboys and trade tales of the toughest Bezier curves we’ve had to wrangle. We point out wrong historical font usage during movies.
We are paid to be detail nerds. But when it comes to close calls in reds and greens, I have to do the unthinkable: shrug my shoulders and guess.
Those details are not missed. Not by me. I am tired of details. I like ideas. Thick, savory ideas. The details monkey is off my back. We have made peace for now.
I know this is blasphemy. I know the AIGA would just as soon tear up my membership and tell me to go into advertising. But I am here to let you know there is a one person who doesn’t mind the occasional “it’s close enough” comment slip through his lips, or “don’t worry, it’s fine,” and the all-time favorite “c’mon, no one is going to care, or even see that…”.
My color blindness has allowed me to think more broadly about the work we create. Will a tint of red make anyone notice but the audience of ourselves? Sometimes I think we lose that kind of perspective. Because in the end our work is for the public to understand and enjoy. Not the graphic designer peanut gallery.
Maybe it is only a case of struggling with a sense of self importance. Isn’t that the never ending question: does design matter? Other fields don’t have these questions. I have never heard someone ask “does medicine matter?”, “does law matter?” And other creative fields matter in ways that design can’t. Architecture, for example, provides essential shelter. If I had a 40% deficiency in, say, angles, then my building would be unsound and dangerous. I would have failed. But a poster campaign with a slightly “off” red isn’t going to be deemed a problem in the public’s eye, only in our own tortured minds.
Maybe our day of detail liberation is coming.
Do you see?
Works until you have a concept that relies on subtle details and the beauty of the attention given to them for the message to be fully enjoyed or understood.
On Jan.14.2006 at 11:01 AM