meeting with Geoff Wednesday 21st April

meeting with Geoff, the suggestions towards a final outcome were....

. Add a satirical element
. Look into a television channel that is designed especially for the colourblind/ Or a design tv interface
. Fashion for the colour blind
. Use colours in a satirical way to show how the difficulties of life can be!

I am very interested in using satire and colour within my final outcome, I have been thinking of ways in which I can do this, such as changes in colours reveal text etc. One idea I had was to do with test strips that change colour in water, it would be interesting to see if I could experiment with using two materials, the test strip and a similar material for text, when the strip is placed in water the colours reveal the text.

I also have been collecting interviews I have made with a few colour blind people. Some of the things they have said about colour are very amusing and would be great text material to use for my final outcome.

Meat colours are also a very interesting outcome idea, if there were some way to tell a colour blind person that a steak was rare, medium rare, medium or well done by the heat change in the meat. Another experiment I will try.

But... at the moment the test strip idea is really interesting me, i think there is a lot I can do with them, from making a publication in which you have to pour water on to posters that as they become wet in rain they reveal writing.

Some more floor graphics research...

Floor Graphics experiment

The main issues when researching colour blindness lie within the juxtaposition between two colours being completely contrasting. If two colours are too similar than it is more difficult to tell the two apart.

From this research I want to look into floor Graphics. My reasoning for this is providing information on the ground in bright colours can provide easier to spot information that contrast to colours of the ground. Most floor spaces are one toned, dark coloured spaces that would be a perfect area to place bold shapes.

Talking to the professionals...

Today I went to visit the Ophthalmology centre at Stoke Mandaville hospital. My uncle is a consultant and surgeon there and let me shadow him for the day to see how they test people for colour blindness.










This is a detailed hue test called the Farnsworth-Munsell 100 hue test. It requires a person to arrange the hues in order, which then allows the Ophthalmologist to test how colour blind a person is.

Reverse color blindness test

Color vision deficient people have a tendency to better night vision and, in some situations, they can perceive variations in luminosity that color-sighted people could not. Only color blind people can actually read what is written in the picture below... That means, if you fail the test, you probably have the full range of color sensitivity that is attributed to color-sighted people.

(Answer: No)



Looking further into CVD, I am starting to realise that the main issues surrounding people with colour sight problems are everyday, mundane graphics. Signs, posters, maps, anything that relies on colour to function. When thinking of colour as a Graphic Designer, we tend to make decisions based on aesthetics initially, perhaps not focusing on what colours can easily be seen by anyone.

Eye Test designs

When the same image is desaturated, the image disappears. A colourblind person can see tones much more clearly than a regular sighted person, so would see the eye image more distinctly.

Because of this I should look further into tones of colour rather than which colours I use. Or, even look at alternatives to using colour.







Having a go at creating my own colour vision graphics, using colours that are commonly used in colour vision tests.

Where colour is used...

Color-coding is in place in public facilities, museums, exhibition sites, etc., where rooms and areas are divided according to theme colors and full of colorful information displays. At railway stations, train lines are color-coded for direction purposes; route maps and time tables are illustrated with lines and characters in a variety of colors.

What bothers colorblind people most?


- When grilling a piece of meat, a red deficient individual cannot tell whether it is raw or well done. Many cannot tell the difference between green and ripe tomatoes or between ketchup and chocolate syrup! Many others are always buying and biting into unripe bananas - they cannot tell if they are yellow or green, and the matt, natural material makes it even harder to distinguish.
- Some food may look definitely disgusting to color vision deficient individuals: a plate full of spinach, for instance, just appears to them like cow pat.
- They can however distinguish some citrus fruits. Oranges seem to be of a brighter yellow than that of lemons.
- A colorblind person is generally unable to interpret the chemical testing kits for swimming pool water, test strips for hard water, soil or water pH tests because they rely on subtle color differences.
- Many colorblind people cannot tell whether a woman is wearing lipstick or not. More difficult to handle for some is the inability to make the difference between a blue-eyed blonde and a green-eyed redhead.
- Color vision deficiencies bother affected children from the earliest years. At school, coloring can become a difficulty when one has to take the blue crayon - and not the pink one - to color the ocean.
- Bi-color and tri-color LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes): is that glowing indicator light red, yellow, or green? Same problem with the traffic lights...