I have a dark secret that I have kept hidden my entire career. No, I didn’t lie about my degree – I’m color-blind.

The first time I thought I might be color-blind was in high school when looking at the back of a biology book, there was a colorblind test with all different colored dots in a circle. You were supposed to see a teapot in the middle. All I saw were dots. My friends laughed and said I must be color-blind, but I didn’t believe it. For some reason, I thought color blindness was when you only saw things in shades of gray. I had already started doing some painting and artsy stuff and it never seemed to be a problem. One day in art class I was painting a large scene with a stormy sky and someone commented that they liked how I had added green in the clouds. I didn’t know I had.

Fast forward to my first job after college as a designer and illustrator for a large company that had a nurse on staff to give exams to new employees.  She gave me an eye test and asked if I knew I was color-blind. At that time, I did, from a previous eye exam in college. I still didn’t believe it and never told anyone, after all, I was an artist and an artist can’t be color-blind. She said, “aren’t you going to be working in the art department?” I sheepishly answered “yes”. She picked up the phone and called my new boss and informed him that I was color-blind. I thought, there goes my job, who wants to hire color-blind artist? To my relief, I was still hired. My new boss never once mentioned it, nor did I. Throughout my entire career, some of my close friends knew but I never told my employers or my clients.

Thirty-five years later, I own my own design firm. My employees know I’m color-blind, in fact, I’m actually kind of proud it. I persevered and at times it has come up (I have trouble with greens and browns of the same value), but it never affected my work in an adverse way. Who knows, maybe it has helped it. I have since discovered that many famous artists and designers are color-blind. Claude Monet was color-blind, and Degas had problems with color as well. Apparently, it is not that uncommon in the art field. One of my most talented designers at Fuzion was also color-blind. He did spectacular paintings. We were equally color-blind and once took a color-blind test online together, we both failed miserably and had a good laugh.

I have gotten back into painting in the last 5 years. Take a look and judge for yourself. Do you want to hire a color-blind designer (or buy a painting from a color-blind artist)? We see things differently.

Ask for the color-blind guy.