For centuries, color blindness has been seen by many in society as a disadvantage to its carriers. Even today there are certain professions and/or activities which prohibit color blind people from engaging in them, such as service positions for the armed forces of most countries. However, despite all of the hardships that they face on a daily basis, some people with color blindness have managed to succeed in their careers, even in such a specialized field as graphic design.
Mongraal is one of those people who happen to be color blind and yet still became a professional designer working with various corporate clients all around the world. He has been designing logos and corporate identities for several years now and his portfolio includes logos for the likes of McDonald’s, Starbucks, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. “If someone is visually impaired it doesn’t mean that he/she can’t do anything.” ~ Mongraal says in one of his blog posts. “And if someone is color blind it doesn’t mean that he cannot be a designer. If you are color blind that doesn’t mean that you can’t fight with your problem. Just do it, don’t let it down!”
What colorblind mode does mongraal use
Whenever creating new designs, Mongraal always starts off by creating a style which is not based on colors at all. He decides what the main visual elements of the logo are going to be and from there he creates shapes using simple tools such as circles or rectangles. Only when he creates a solid, understandable silhouette does he proceed to adding colors and gradients.
But as his color vision deficiency is so severe, not all elements of the design can be presented with such ease. The most difficult part of any project for him is always choosing certain colored backgrounds for each logo. This means that he needs to work with a limited number of colors which limits his choices considerably. Also he cannot use ready-made color palettes as they are all based on colors that even colorblind people can distinguish from one another. So until now, he has been using a little trick which is to take an image in grayscale and add it over the logo so that he could choose a background color for it from the image’s palette.
What is color blindness and how does it affect gaming
Mongraal has been a gamer since he was a little boy and as such, he is quite used to seeing the world in shades of gray. That being said, there were times when Angry Birds or Fruit Ninja just didn’t seem exciting enough to him, so he would always invent ways to make things more interesting for himself. One day he had an idea of choosing a different color blindness mode in the game which would make certain objects pop out. So for example, if fruit or TNT barrels were drawn in black and white colors then they would appear to be much easier to see when compared to drawn with colors.
How Fortnite’s colorblind mode works
“I play a lot of Fortnite with my friends and we always have a problem recognizing enemy players. That’s why I suggested them to enable colorblind mode which will be based on the most popular types of color vision deficiencies – Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia.” ~ Mongraal says in one of his blog posts. “This mode will only affect the game’s UI (user interface) like health bars, enemy markers and timers. The game itself will be in color so people without any vision problems won’t have any difficulties to spot an enemy or pretty much anything else on-screen.”
The benefits of using a colorblind mode in gaming
Mongraal thinks that such a mode would greatly benefit gamers with color vision deficiencies and therefore, it should also please the game developers by increasing the number of their customers. “This will open up Fortnite to millions of people who couldn’t play it before.” ~ Mongraal says when talking about Fortnite’s potential color blind mode. “I’m sure that it would also motivate other game producers to do something similar.” ~ he adds in another blog post. “After all, being colorblind doesn’t mean you can’t have fun playing games, it’s just that you need to play games that are designed especially for people like you.”