HWAWON CHO
Painter / Illustrator / Print Designer
born in South Korea, now based in UK
Life in Forest
Year: 2021- 2022
‘Life in Forest’ is a textile collection of a high-end range of fashion accessories designed to be more inclusive and maximise visual stimulation for people with colour blindness (specifically red/ green blindness). This collection took an inspiration from the well-known animation ‘Bambi’, capturing its lively atmosphere and delivering it to people.
“For most of us, colour is an obvious part of our visual perception. Yet 1 in 12 men and 1 in 200 women have some form of colour vision deficiency, better known as colour blindness. This equates to 1 person in every class and 300 million people worldwide.”
- (Kukka, 2020-2021)
Impaired colour vision is overlooked in the aesthetic or decorative use of colour in fashion industry and after some investigation on the market, I could conclude that fashion accessories is one of the areas. As can be evidenced, colour blindness is overlooked when considering ways in which society can help people who are visually impaired. With my concept, I aimed to embrace their vision and made designs that are more inclusive to them by utilising a colour palette that is also suited to that audience, but still appealing to a broader range of consumers.
To approach visual research with this concept, firstly, I had to research which colours and contrasts are well perceived by colour blind people (red/green blindness). After that, I was able to use Adobe Photoshop to simulate how various products and merchandise looks through the perspective of someone who has colour blindness. This then helped me to gain a baseline understanding of which colour combinations could be selected to provide the best experience for that target audience. To ensure the inclusiveness of my designs, I decided to not only utilise a colour palette that is visually stimulating for both colour bind, and normal sighted people, but also a range of colourways to appeal and be more inclusive of all consumers, considering the contrasts of colour combination for red/green blind people.