When it comes to choosing colors, I’ve always proven myself to be a pretty good visual person. But one unpleasant incident happened that forced me to train my vision and color perception.
One day, a friend and I decided to buy some t-shirts for a band to perform at a concert. The design and concept had already been thought out, agreed upon, and approved, so all that was left was to buy them.
We went to the mall and found a shop that offered t-shirt printing.
We spent a long time choosing the main fabric for the t-shirts: we looked at samples, touched them, and considered the price.
Finally, this too was finished. It was decided that the logo would be located strictly in the center of the medium size. The next step was choosing the color scheme.
The main colors (according to the salesperson) were chosen immediately and very quickly. Red and black presented no problems. But when we started choosing shades of yellow and orange, that’s when I stumbled upon a delicate topic for me. It turned out I have trouble distinguishing between light yellow and light orange.
My friend, examining the colored stripes, clearly pointed out the orange one. I bet it was yellow. He persisted, even grinning slightly, so confident was he in his rightness.
But I didn’t calm down, I don’t like to argue, but I didn’t want to lose in things that were obvious to me.
I repeated my argument, insisting on my own, but then the salesperson intervened in our unintentional argument and also confirmed the color my friend had named—orange.
I was now truly defeated, because, firstly, the girl was so attractive that arguing with her would have seriously damaged my ego, and secondly, I tried to find the same color in the store and realized that I truly couldn’t tell the difference.
We ordered the shirts we needed, clarified the production time and other details, and left. As we were descending from the top floor of the shopping center, I kept noticing this particular color. For some strange reason, I kept seeing it everywhere. And almost every time, I wondered if it was yellow or orange.
I felt uneasy. I came home and started searching for information about it online. I learned that it turns out that color blindness is not such a rare phenomenon in men.
I advise men to have their vision checked by an eye doctor, not just their eyesight, but also their color perception.
But I also learned that even this can be trained. There are special exercises that help train your color perception. This invigorated me so much that I immediately began studying color schemes and training my vision for shades every day. Since I had already been speed reading for five years, these daily minute-long exercises had already become a habit.
At the very beginning, I even compared it to solfeggio singing.
When you first look at notes and try to “read” them, they’re just squiggles that don’t represent a sound. But when you understand a certain symbol as a sound, when you begin to associate pitch with the symbols on the staff with your inner ear, everything falls into place.
When I looked at colors, I wasn’t sure if it was orange or yellow. But after reading about how these colors can be distinguished, I gained confidence.
Bright colors may still be difficult to distinguish, but colors that differ in semitones and tones are quite possible. Just like notes.
What’s the point of all this?!
Because the study of notes, or solfeggio specifically, is based on the same principle. At first, you don’t see the difference, but then, after fruitful practice, you sense even the slightest deviations. And that’s awesome.
You, like me, also don’t see the difference, and then training gives you the opportunity to begin to hear it.
