Logo Creation and Colorblindness

Just wondering if anyone else takes color blindness into account when they create a logo for a company. Color blind people will see 2 colors as the same, but are able to differentiate between the two through shades. e.g: red-green color blindness, or deuteranomaly, means that the person is able only to see shades of yellow when they look at reds, greens, yellows, or oranges. They also see purples and blues as the same, but with different shades.

Colorblindness effects about 10% of the population of the world. In the US, about 10.5 million men are colorblind.

If you're interested, here are a couple really great tools for ensuring that your print/web designs are viewable by the colorblind:

http://colorlab.wickline.org/colorblind/colorlab/
Shows how a color looks to someone who is colorblind, in comparison to it's actual true color.

http://colorfilter.wickline.org/
Will show the specified URL as viewed by any of the various color blind types. Including images!

Well... Personally I'm a little annoyed that the world has come to consider a highly colored complex graphical image a logo. I know this idea is perpetuated by the web but even awards annuals are filled with objects that look more like my desktop icons than a traditional logo.

Maybe I'm hanging on to an old and outdated idea but I believe that a logo should be capable of standing on its own as 1 color (preferable black) as easily as it can with multiple colors. It should also be just as recognizable on tail of a jet as it is after being sent through a fax machine (yes people still use those).

I think a well crafted logo SHOULDN'T NEED other colors to work. Look at William Golden's CBS "eye" or Paul Rand's IBM logos. Both work pretty much anywhere you can imagine.

However all that said, I do think that colorblindness should generally be taken into account when choosing colors that need to provide information (text in a logo, website navigation, etc). The bottom line is that if people can't see it they can't use it.

@webcrazy:

Art is not simply color. Graphic art includes technique, lines, curves, color, flow, movement, emotion, etc. Don't disinclude the colorblind simply because they don't view one aspect of a piece of art the way we do, your statement was almost discriminatory and was at the very least improvident.

@graphixboy:

Agreed, most of what we see today are not what I would consider logos either. Like the currently infamous glossy logo. Anytime I create a logo, my first concepts are presented monochramatically, and I prefer to use only 1 color in any logo I design. Occasionally I'll outstep that bound with 2 colors; but generally it isn't needed.

I wonder if people with colorblindness commonly use screen readers.

In my experience they do not. Typically colorblind people (actually a very high percent of males) can see quite well there are just some colors that show up as shades of gray.

For example I'm working on a site right now where the brand colors are Maroon and Gold. I had a colorblind person look at my designs and they said they couldn't distinguish maroon text links inside black body copy. Although I must admit in this specific case I have a hard time seeing the difference between maroon/black as well.

Basically the thought is to just add other visual cues to things (background, hover, underlines, etc) to show active content instead of simply relying on different colors.

Your not alone. I agree 100%

As for the color blindness. I hate to sound like an ass but, if only 10% is inflicted by this type of blindness then, thats a number I can live with. The way I see it, the color blind have learned to deal with their blindness to color and if I go and screw with their training I may confuse them. Who am I to undo all their hard work. Besides that, there are various types of color blindness, who would you make adjustments for?

Years ago a doctor said i had a slight colour perception which was not as serious as colour blindness. Apparently this only concerned my ability to recognise one colour which was green. Was never convinced about the diagnosis and thought it was because i had consumed too many alcoholic beverages the previous evening. Anyway to cut a long story short i have used photoshop etc for several years without any problems. and no it is not something i have ever given a great deal of thought to. Might be worth considering if there was too much going on in a logo or image though.

That is an interesting site mindfullsilence... thanks for posting them here

And yet we still for some reason are forced to code for IE6...craziness! lol

We'll be rid of IE6 soon enough.

I think at least some consideration should be taken for color blindness, if not for everything, at least enough to make sure any text in the logo is distinguishable.

I took the time awhile ago to modify my color picker so that it displays not only the picked color, but also the grayscale version of that color as well. I have a colorblind cousin

Very interesting this blog never ceases to amaze with clever themes eg manya

I like that idea for maybe big corportaions veiwed massivley around the globe like mcdonolds starbucks and several other large companies but as for every logo i dont think it is needed in order for the colorblind to understand your logo fully.

While the idea of trying to cater to the lowest common denominator is attractive, suggesting that a company should restrict itself to monochrome logos is a bit presumptuous.

Logos may reflect a number of elements that the company may consider of value, such as the variety of products they make or even the multitude of cultures their products are intended to target.

Some logos are able to stand on their own because of the shape or color, but with everyone trying to compete in a global market, why shouldn't they be given some artistic license to achieve their goals?

The vast majority of us don't see in monochrome, so why should we confine ourselves to such a restrictive palette for advertising?