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My '90s era mall food court sign looked fine to me, but my colorblind cousin couldn't read the red text on the brown background at all
So I do some freelance design work on the side, mostly small local stuff, and the local mall here in Fort Wayne asked me to redo the directory boards in the food court. I thought I did a solid job too. Brown background, red lettering for the restaurant names, clean and readable, or so I thought. My cousin Jake came to visit from Columbus two weeks ago and we walked through there, and he just stopped dead and asked me why half the signs were blank. Turns out Jake is red green colorblind and that red text on the brown background was practically invisible to him, just this muddy blob with no edges. I felt like garbage. But here is the trick that actually fixed it, I started taking every design and running it through a free colorblind simulator before I send it anywhere, and also I converted the whole thing to grayscale to check the contrast. If it turns to mush in grayscale it is going to turn to mush for somebody out there. Took me maybe 20 minutes to redo all 9 signs with a cream background and dark green text and now Jake says it reads perfectly. I still catch myself skipping that grayscale check when I am in a hurry, and I always regret it. How many of you actually test your color choices before you hand stuff off, or do you just trust your own eyes like I did for way too long?
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