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My colorblind brother-in-law picked my logo colors and now the whole thing works better
So my brother-in-law is red-green colorblind and he was over at my place in Boise two weeks ago while I was messing with a logo for a coffee shop client. I had this whole palette built around warm reds and deep greens, felt really nice to me. He looked at it for like 5 seconds and goes, those two browns are almost the same, are they supposed to match? I was confused because to me they were clearly red and green. He pulled up one of those color blindness simulator tools on his phone and showed me my palette turned into a muddy puddle of brown. That hit me hard because about 8 percent of guys have some form of this and I never once thought about it in 6 years of doing design work. I rebuilt the whole thing with way more contrast in the lightness values and added a blue accent. Client loved it and my brother-in-law could actually tell the sections apart. Now I run every palette through that simulator before I send anything. Does anyone here have a go-to contrast checker they trust, or do you just eyeball it?
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faithrodriguez16d ago
Oh man, that story really got me. It is such a simple thing but so easy to miss, and I bet a TON of designers have sent out palettes that look like mush to a chunk of their audience without ever knowing it. Good on you for actually listening to him instead of getting defensive, because I know my first reaction would probably be to say well it looks fine to me. The part about running every palette through the simulator before sending is the real takeaway here, that is just smart practice no matter what. I do not have a fancy checker to share, I mostly just flip my colors to grayscale and make sure the values are far apart, and if two colors turn into the same gray I swap one out. That trick has saved me more than once, and it sounds like it would fit right into what you are already doing.
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