January 2013 Column: Miscolor my World

[outsdr]

I have a deep, dark secret to tell.

While I’ve hidden it most of my adult life, it’s something that I was relatively open about as a
child, before learning it should never be spoken of again, out of
consequential fear. But the time may now be right to let down my guard,
and share …

I’ve never been blessed with a sense of fashion.

That’s not the secret; that’s just an obvious truth. As a child, my mother
tended to buy (or more usually make) the majority of my clothing, so I
was at the whims of her tastes, which leaned further into cowboy
territory than I was really prone to go myself. Still, it made her happy
I suppose.

However, once I reached 7th grade, I began to want to chose my clothes myself, and the severity of my ailment became readily
apparent. I tended to chose whatever caught my eye, regardless of how
stylish or well-put together. Once I reached high-school, I tried even
harder, only to discover I had a distinct disregard for making patterns
match.

At the end of the 1980s, I went through a short neon-color
phase (including a dayglo white t-shirt that I wish I still had) before
finally settling on the look I retain to this day.

I wear black, almost exclusively.

Many have looked at me and knowingly nodded, thinking they know why.

In college, I was accused of being into ‘mope rock’, which then turned to
accusations of being ‘emo’ and a ‘goth’ as years went by. As untrue as
this was, it was easier than allowing the truth to be known.

(It’s also been pointed out to me that black is a slimming color. While this
may not be the main reason for my color choice, it’s not unwelcomed.)

But none of this is the secret either.

I’m not sure when I decided I’d be a graphic designer. Long before I knew
what it was called, I suppose. In elementary school, I alternated
between wanting to be a cook, an astronaut, and/or a scientist. During
one of our career fairs in middle school, I watched a film strip about
commercial art, as it was known at the time. I don’t particularly
remember being overly intrigued, but I do remember to this day the
narrator discussing the finer points of choosing the proper crunch sound
for a cheese puff snack, and the importance of getting it right.

In high school, I figured I’d either become an actor or do something
visually artistic, or become a genetic engineer. I suppose it was my
senior year, finally, that I decided on graphic design. Not that I had
shown an aptitude for this career, but more because I hadn’t shown much
of an aptitude for anything else at that point. I received my Bachelor
of FIne Arts degree in 1994, and I’ve worked in print ad design
primarily ever since.

Wearing black. And not because I’m ‘creative’ or ‘moody.’ (I am, but that’s not why.)

In my high school art classroom, there was a poster on the wall showing
columns and rows of red apples. At the bottom was the slogan “Be
Yourself!”

It wasn’t until the end of the school year that a casual remark by a classmate made me realize that one of the apples was green.

I shrugged it off. It was nothing new to me. I’d been color blind all my life.

And there’s my secret.

For someone who doesn’t have it, colorblindness is difficult to understand.
It’s not always the inability to see a color; it’s the inability to see
a color correctly. Reds, browns and greens all blend together for me,
as do blues and purples - but this all depends on the light and the
surrounding colors as well. At night, I can always tell the difference
between a red light and a green light. But green lights and street
lights can be the same color to me.

Just because something is green does not mean I will see it as red. Sometimes I do; sometimes I
see it correctly, and sometimes, I see a color that has no name and
internally I tend to refer to as ‘guess-me-gray’.

(If you know someone who is colorblind, stop shoving things in their face and asking
them what color it is. Really. They hate it, I promise you.)

So, how does someone who is color blind become a designer? With either great care, or utter lack of it.

I work with primary colors (red, blue and yellow) because I cannot
possibly confuse them with each other. I avoid earth tones or colors
that are too similar to each other. Also, I keep references of color
names and the codes that I need to properly recreate them. This is a
wonderful thing, and I wish I had had it as a child, because there were
far too many times I colored grass with the brown crayon because the
label had torn off.

(That’s another quick way to annoy a colorblind
person: tear all the labels off their crayons. Granted, that’s pretty
annoying, anyway; but for someone who is color blind, you’ve taken an
extra, more devious step.)

Of course, choosing to work in newspaper was an additional huge help, since the majority of the work I
do is in black and white; no color required. Even so, I learned long ago
to never tell prospective employers about my deficiency and to just let
my work speak for itself. It’s hard to trust a designer who has to
second guess color matches. (Oddly, some people have trouble trusting a
designer who doesn’t wear all black. Go figure.)

So there it is, my darkest, longest kept secret of my adult life. I’ve always been color blind, and I always will be.

And the next time you see me, please don’t ask me what color your shirt is,
or think I’m a middle-aged goth. Just remember that wearing all black
means there are no colors to match.

The slimming effect is just a happy accident.

http://wp.me/p2t94g-3o

Comments

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

I see a color that has no name and internally I tend to refer to as ‘guess-me-gray'

It blows my mind that you can see a colour that I physically can't.

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I've honestly never thought of it that way. :)

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Books about neuropsychology always bang on the colour red as an example of "qualia" - subjective experiences, like the experience of seeing red. One chestnut asks how two people can be sure they're actually seeing the same colour, and not seeing different colours but agreeing to label them "red". The broad answer is that if qualia arise from the brain, and peoples' brains are wired up pretty much the same, then of course they're seeing the same colour. But IIUC, I can never experience the intermediate colour you sometimes see.

(Or am I wrong? Your eyes and mine are structurally different, but our brains are both wired up to see red and green. They proved this in colour-blind monkeys by restoring the red-green cones in their eyes - the previously unused red-green bit of their brains smoothly came online to process the data. Hee hee, I shall find out!)

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

I remember reading about the color blind monkeys, and hoping it would become a human-viable treatment.

[dreamer-easy.livejournal.com]

Shit, how cool would that be?!

I played around with the simulations of colour-blindness at http://www.vischeck.com/ - I think they'd be really helpful for graphic designers with typical vision, but I can report I never experienced "guess me gray" - the problem colours just looked like a muddy light green. So you're still one up on me. :)

[outsdr.livejournal.com]

That's pretty amazing. Those Gauguin examples are a revelation to me. I never realized how much I was missing, and now I understand why to me a lot of paintings have always been ... boring.