Bio said 1027 days ago:

Hope I don’t sound weird but:

You’re colour blind?!

Then how the heck do you design so great? Wow!

tom said 1027 days ago:

I am colorblind, but according to Einstein the color you see that you think is red can be green and such, so I’d like to think that I just have a different taste relative to other people.

Bobby Andersen said 1027 days ago:

You’re a great graphic designer nonetheless.

That’s really crazy, though. I can’t even begin to imagine…

Dave Simon said 1027 days ago:

John –
I didn’t know you were colorblind. I am as well. And I remember in grade school the kids asking constantly, “What color is this shirt?” “What color is this paper?”

They assumed that colorblind meant I see like a dog or something. Like my vision is grayscale.

I’ve always pointed out to people that learning color is similar to learning shapes. If someone told you that this – O – is a square, you’d call it a square. But people taught you it’s a circle.

Same with colors for me. Crayola crayons all had the color written on the side, so I could take out the “red” and draw a patch of it, then remember that color as “red.” Do I see the same red as my wife? No. But I know it’s red, same as she does.

As far as design, I’m fairly bad at picking new color schemes, I rely heavily on the various sites online that have various color palettes or can build one for you based on a base color.

However, what I have noticed is that when it comes to RGB colors, I’m very good at being able to tell the values of them. For instance, where someone might see red, I know it’s #F00. I just learn easier that way.

I’m not militaristic about it, but colorblindness is such a misnomer. More like color deficient. Or something like that.

Myke said 1027 days ago:

That’s kind of trippy. So did you purposely make the little leaves in your logo green because they are naturally green to the majority of people or because you like red leaves?

Chris Biagini said 1027 days ago:

When I was a kid, an eye doctor once told my mother that I was color ignorant, as if the reason I couldn’t see the figure 7 in the dots was because I was simply too feeble-minded. If I were slightly smarter, I’d probably be embarrassed by this fact and not tell anyone, but I guess I should just be proud that managed to find my way here. (EDIT: Scratch that, seems I’m having trouble working the web form. I swear I hit submit, and it sent the form, but she ain’t getting posted.)

At any rate, check out some of the examples at Visicheck . They’ve got a Photoshop plugin to make examples for yourself, and even a web application that processes images to be kinder to colorblind people.

Lucas Newman said 1027 days ago:

As a colorblind person, I fail to see how this is accurate. Being colorblind isn’t as simple as saying “green is like red” because there is no concept of the perceptual difference between green and red. I am not as severe as some people, and the grass looks green and the sign looks red to me, but in my case, similar colors tend to look nearly or exactly the same. To imagine colorblindness, just think of not being able to distinguish colors like grey and pink or blue and purple, instead of seeing one color as another color.

Michael Greene said 1027 days ago:

Dan’s comment interests me as well, but what I really want to get at is that this still fails to explain it to me:
Do you see the grass as the same color as the red sign? A similar one? Complete different colors, but the grass is also a striking color, as opposed to the pleasant blue-neighbor which I see?

Jon Hicks said 1026 days ago:

@ Lucas “As a colorblind person, I fail to see how this is accurate.”
Ah come on! Its not meant to be serious! I thought peeps might find this funny – I did anyway!

@ W.Andrew – I really hope you’re joking! Trouble is I get a lot of americans telling me that!

@Thomas – “I like to say “I can only drive with a passenger”.” Love it! Thats the question I get too.

@Neil – I wasn’t ready to come out of the closet on that one just yet!

Generally people – please don’t take this as a serious example of what it like to be colorblind, it just for larks. Of course I don’t see the grass as red – that would stupid. ;o)

Craig C. said 1026 days ago:

I for one think red grass would be wicked awesome.

Chip said 1026 days ago:

It really encourages me to see that there are so many fellow colorblind color-deficient designers out there. It’s also very interesting to read the different things people say about being colorblind as well as the “myths” normal color vision people may have.

I’ve never heard of colorblind people being able to see better at night. After doing a little research, it seems this isn’t true. Perhaps what your teacher was talking about is called Achromatopsia, a visual defect marked by total color blindness in which the colors of the spectrum are seen as tones of white-gray-black. A person with Achromatopsia only has rods (no cones) so they may be able to form a better image at night or when it’s dark than a person with normal vision.

Being colorblind has nothing to do with the amout of rods and cones in your eyes. “The cones are responsible for encoding color. Each cone contains structures or visual pigments sensitive to one of three wavelengths of light: red, green, and blue. Normal persons are able to match all colors of the spectrum by mixtures of only three fundamental color sensitivities. Hence, the huge variety of colors we perceive stems from the cone cells’ response to different compositions of wavelengths of light. Defects in color vision occur when one of the three cone cell color coding structures fails to function properly. One of the visual pigments may be present and functioning abnormally, or it may be absent altogether.” For more information read this article. And of course, let’s not forget the infamous Ishihara Test.

Chip said 1026 days ago:

Damn… not used to this Textile thinger. Here is the Ishihara Test . Sorry Jon. Can you please edit/consolidate all my posts into one.

stilist said 1026 days ago:

Not to be an arse, but shouldn’t you be calling this `colour-confused’? Colour-blind is seeing greyscale, colour-confused is misinterpreting what you’re seeing.

And that’s a rather funny picture for it. :)

Jon Hicks said 1025 days ago:

stilist – you’re being an arse. ;o)

Markus said 1025 days ago:

I’m colorblind pretty much like Lucas a couple of comments up. I have huge problems identifying if there’s a color cast on a photograph for example, something that kind of makes things difficult since I’m a photojournalist.
On my first job it took them about 4 months figuring out that I was colorblind, fortunately before the photo of a green tinted man went to the printers.
My editor later taught me the RGB values of the average scandinavian skin-color which helps a lot when trying to get rid of tungsten-casts. Kind of like when my pre-school teacher put labels on my crayons spelling out the colors… Nowadays I’ve trained my eyes so I can pretty much see if there’s a red or yellow cast on a person, but from time to time I wish color photography was never invented =)

Oh, and the “can you see this color?” thing is beginning to be a real pain in the ***

Patrick H. Lauke said 1024 days ago:

had to laugh, as it reminded me of people trying to understand what it’s like for me to be shortsighted, and when i haven’t got my glasses on they hold up their hand and say “so, can you see how many fingers am i holding?” sigh

Ian Lloyd said 1024 days ago:

Oops. link not displayed:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewm/28211332/in/pool-23794719@N00/

Mark said 1024 days ago:

Or (and this is about as unscientific and cack-handed with Photoshop as it gets):

Thomas Loudon said 1024 days ago:

Another answer to the traffic light question could be:

(in a sarcastic tone) “I only have trouble when they are upside down!”. This can be followed by the word ‘idiot’ just to make sure they get the point.

Jon Hicks said 1024 days ago:

@ Thomas – Superb! I’ll have to remember that one! Thats often the first question you get asked…

@ no name available – If I do that will I see what ‘normal people’ see?

Bobby Andersen said 1023 days ago:

lol

I’m so gullible…

John said 1023 days ago:

My ex girlfriend is color-blind and sees trees and grass pink. He he he. She saw me, my skin green… We are all from mars for her.

Bobby Andersen said 1022 days ago:

Did I also mentioned I sometimes get confused? :p

Lowell Wood said 1019 days ago:

Jens; i came across the same thing in the Zurich airport and i didnt think about that until you brought it up
this also got me thinking about people with much more major disabilities, and how you could design sites so that they can be used by people with those disabilities, and i ran across this article.

Zach said 1016 days ago:

Im also colour blind so i know how it is with people asking. After many years of people asking I still can’t get the right wording of telling people.

I personally have a hard deal with my colourblindness and my designs. Im very colourblind… so as people have just mentioned with ZachInglis.com’s latest design… It has pink in it that I never knew was there. As i idle on IRC i often ask if the colour is right.

Mario said 1013 days ago:

John: I just had an article published on digital-web.com about color-blindness and web design. If you have a free moment, I’d love it if added your own tips to the comment box. :)

godza said 1007 days ago:

omg, i can’t believe that you are colorblind.

You are great graphic designer, but i cant understad how do you make your briliant artwork when you are colorblind?

I respect you now, more then ever!