What do you see?

I was 10 years old and my dad, who was then in the jewelry business, would bring me to his office when I didn’t have school. He’d keep me busy, giving me important tasks like keeping an eye on the Telex machine to see if any new messages came in. On this day, my task was to sort a bin of colored semi-precious stones.?

After diligently separating the stones into different piles I announced I was done, and my father came over to inspect my work. Looking at my neat piles of diamonds, sapphires, and yellow topaz stones, he pointed to the 4th pile and said “that one isn’t done”. Looking at my puzzled face, he said, “wait—you don’t see a mix of rubies and emeralds in that pile?

That’s how we found out I was color blind. A test at the eye doctor later that day confirmed it.

So you might ask, how did a color-blind person lead a successful 20+ year career in graphic arts and creative technology? After all, James Clear points out that the way to win is to focus on your strengths and avoid your weaknesses.

I’d actually argue that an even better strategy is finding a way to turn your weakness into your strength.?

What is color blindness?

Before I explain, it will help to understand what color blindness actually is.

The retinas in our eyes are filled with two kinds of light-sensitive cells, called photoreceptors. One kind, called rods, senses levels of brightness but not color. They essentially see the world in black and white (or more specifically, shades of gray). Other cells, called cones, are sensitive to color, and there are 3 kinds of them, each that respond either to short (blue), medium (yellow/green), or long (red) frequency wavelengths.?

The average eye contains about 90 million rods, which help us see details in darkness after our eyes have adjusted, but we only have between 5-8 million cones. That means even a small deficiency in some of those cones can have an impact on how we perceive color.

My eyes have a lower-than-average number of Long wavelength cones—those sensitive to red light. It doesn’t mean I can’t see red at all, but it means my sensitivity to red is significantly lower than other people. So while I can see bright green and bright red, it’s the various shades in between that become confusing. It’s why rubies and emeralds look very similar to me.?

Likewise, people who have fewer Small wavelength cones, those sensitive to blue light, have trouble differentiating between blue and yellow (you may recall that viral Twitter meme from a few years back about whether a dress was blue or gold).

Since I have trouble seeing red, anything that has red in it becomes more difficult to perceive. If you remember your kindergarten finger painting classes, you get purple when you mix red and blue. To me, purple looks similar to blue unless you mix a whole lot of red into it. If you’re building a chart in Excel using blue and purple lines, I will likely have a hard time telling them apart. Same with shades of orange, which is a mix of red and yellow. And so on.?

Basically, my overall perception of color is different than what most people see. As an analogy, some people need a lot of salt in their food to taste something, but others can sense even a tiny amount of salt. I don’t need a lot of salt, but I do need a lot of red.

Ok, the science lesson is over.

Changing weakness into strength

When I initially became interested in design, I just accepted the fact that I was bad at color. But I was very interested in technology and the science behind color. And so I dug in my heels and learned everything I could about the foundational concepts around how color works. As Robert Poynton writes, we can leverage all of our senses to increase our perception.

To perceive color, I couldn’t rely on my eyes. I would have to look elsewhere… which led me to #Adobe #Photoshop.

Photoshop was incredible. It (literally) opened my eyes to color in ways I could never perceive. I dug into the depths of everything Photoshop had to offer, understanding how each of the pixels made up complex images. Other people would look at Photoshop and marvel at the magic it could do. But I could peel back the levels, the channels, the curves, and the values. I knew it wasn’t magic. For me, looking at an image in Photoshop was like Neo looking at the Matrix—I saw things by the number.

Here’s a story to illustrate what I mean.?

I was once asked to retouch an image for a fashion magazine ad. I printed a high-quality glossy proof (called a matchprint in those days) and sent it to the client to review, who said there was too much red in the image. I made some adjustments to the image and once again sent an expensive proof to the client, who still claimed the image was too red. I was confused because I had already removed so much red that the model’s skin tone was approaching a pasty white—the numbers in Photoshop don’t lie. But hey, the client is always right, right??

I created a third proof and this time, delivered it to the customer myself—and burst out into laughter as soon as I walked into his office. He was wearing a red sweater and was seeing the reflection in the glossy proof! After removing his sweater, he approved the original proof I had sent.?

And I’m the color blind one who can’t see red!

My weakness resulted in my reliance on Adobe’s tools, forcing me to understand the deep inner workings of the technology, and to understand the science behind it all. My weakness ultimately translated to my unique strength—helping me land a dream job at Adobe and to spend years as a top expert teaching others how to use Adobe products.

It’s our nature to look at our weaknesses and avoid them, but as Phil Knight says, if all we see are problems, we’re missing opportunities. It’s there. You just have to close your eyes to see it.

There’s a ton to talk about on this topic, which I can pretty much guarantee we’ll dig into in future editions of this newsletter.?

Oh, and one more thing:

Now that you know a little bit more about what color blindness is, I’d suggest taking some time to learn how to ensure what you create can be seen and understood by all people including those who have color deficiencies.

For example, I was pleased to see that the popular game Wordle has a high-contrast version that enables people like myself to participate and enjoy the game. Lots of applications have color palettes that are color-blind friendly, or you can do what one of my friends Michael Ninness used to do, which is to show me a chart he was working on and asking “just want to make sure–can you see this?”

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Books referenced in this edition:

1. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear
2. Do Improvise: Less push. More pause. Better results. A new approach to work (and life) by Robert Poynton
3. Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight

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Read. Learn. Share. is Curated Curiosity.? I regularly share quotes with brief commentary on LinkedIn from things I read, watch, and learn. This series takes us on a journey that goes deeper on top-of-mind topics and themes.