My first job–the first thing that wasn’t chore related I was paid to do–was building a website. This was my introduction to the agony and ecstasy of hexadecimal codes. You have a near endless (or endless enough) option of hue and saturation for any color you can imagine. You just have to know the right 6 digit magic word. What struck me the most about this article, is that the author/web developer is color blind. He can’t see color, but in order to do his job every day he has to communicate through color. I don’t know if he saw this as a limitation or not. What I do know, is that the author learned how to communicate with color by learning how to actually read hexadecimal numbers. That. Is. Insane. He picked up this superpower without even realizing how unique an ability it was. Now he’s trying share what he’s learned with all of us. Wish I had that knowledge when I was 23 and trying to find the exact shade of burgundy, or brick, or fire-engine, or maybe let’s go all the way back to terra cotta…
As web-designer in my former life, this is fascinating. In my current life as a recruiter, I can’t say that before reading this article I would ever consider a color-blind designer as a top candidate. Honestly, that’s a tough admission, because in general I’m a huge advocate for diversity and inclusion. Obviously I still have a lot of biases I’m blind to.
