Colour Coded Chaos Being red/green colour blind was genetic gift passed to Julian Ledlin from his grandfather. His take on how he has navigated life, including an early career as a graphic designer of all things, with his ‘gift’, is amusingly recounted here. can be very tricky. My colour blind buddies and I quietly eat unripe bananas way more often than we’d like to. We smile and nod supportively when people go on about the “stunning pinks” and “vibrant reds” of sunsets. And while rainbows are said to project the entire colour spectrum into the sky, we see a simple blue and yellow stripe in the shape of a very big arch, which I have to admit is pretty impressive. Double rainbow? Now you’re talking.
Here is a sample from the Ishihara colour blind test. Colour normal people will see the number 6. Julian sees nothing.
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iting into an unripe banana is not a pleasant experience. When ripe, bananas are a sublime feat of nature: creamy texture, sweet aroma, they’re the perfect mid-morning pick-me-up and they come neatly sealed within their own ergonomic packaging. The unripe banana, however, is the bad boy of the fruit bowl. As soon as you bite into one of these firm, green monsters, a horseman of the apocalypse bolts loose. Woody, stringy and strangely chemically, but you knew what you were in for when you started peeling it… But by then it was too late. Everybody knows that once you’ve started on that impossible peel you can’t just leave it for a couple of days to ripen, you have to fall on your sword and finish it there and then. “But what did you expect, peeling a green banana?” I hear you ask. Well, I, along with 8% of the world’s male population and 0.5% of the female population, am red / green colour blind. We are the colour-challenged minority in a very colour-centric world. We see little difference, if any, between a green banana and a yellow one. It’s a case of peel at your own peril. Roll the dice and hope like crazy Lady Luck is in your corner. And it doesn’t stop at bananas, cooking takes on a myriad potential kitchen catastrophes. Is that meat cooked? Are the onions brown? What about the potatoes? Are they green and poisonous? Or yellow and delicious? A colour blind person is unable to fully see red, green or blue light, thus distinguishing between most colours 18 TVO
I fudged a career in television as a graphic designer for two decades. No-one ever knew my dirty little secret. I pretended to know what I was talking about when it came to knowing which colour was what. I relied on the power of suggestion and vague, open-ended questions. I’d let my more “colour-able” co-workers fill in the gaps… much like the way a psychic operates. All of us colour blind folk have varying survival tricks and techniques to help us slink by as undetected as possible. Sometimes though, you have to drop the act and lean on people like shop assistants for accurate colour information. Usually for me, this happens in the fruit shop, sometimes the clothes shop. Apparently, I have bought some very loud fashion items in my time, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you right? Wrong. Sooner or later, someone from colour-correct law enforcement feels compelled to tell you how bright a particular shirt is. Like it’s hurting their eyeballs and they risk being permanently blinded if you continue to wear it. Some people are profoundly unoriginal.
Day to day life constantly throws up seemingly minor challenges for my colour-challenged cohort. In Royal North Shore Hospital the other day I was instructed to take the red lift, NOT the green lift to level 9. The green lift only went to level 6, the red one went to 9… with no-one around to ask for help as I approached some colourful lifts, internal chaos ensued, and getting to level 9 played out like a cheaply written sitcom. Thankfully it wasn’t an emergency, it’s a relief to know that area of the hospital is not mapped out with a trail of colour coded breadcrumbs. Speaking of mapping… The keys down the side of most topographic maps resemble the indistinguishable plethora of “green options” on a Taubman’s paint chart. Put a colour blind guy in charge of your four wheel drive adventure and the rescue chopper will be circling in no time. Maps are tricky. One morning, during the recent lockdown, I spent way too long trying to work out if I lived in a red zone or a green zone. Do I go to work or not? An hour passes with me sweating over a murky looking map of Sydney that “highlighted” the Covid-19 hotspots. The phone rings. “Julian, where are you? You’re supposed to be at work.”
