Synthensia

I've blogged a little bit before about an interesting condition I have called synthensia. Here's a wiki article on it.

I haven't given it a whole lot of thought because it's just the way I am. I suppose if anything, I was surprised other people didn't see letters and numbers and music in color and taste shapes. But I think it's fascinating the way our brains work and all the variations of that. So when I was reading one of my favorite blogs, ColourLovers, and saw this article on synthensia, I wanted to share it.

The blogger's experience is different than my own. I don't see colors as distinctly as she does. My are more like halos or glows, I guess. It's a bit hard to describe. And I couldn't map all of them out the way she does. What's interesting is that we see letters and numbers as different colors. For example, her color map actually hurts me to look at it, almost like fingernails on a chalkboard, because her colors aren't "right." They're not the colors I associate with those words and numbers and it creates this discord in my brain that is almost painful.

But I love how she, also a graphic designer, talks about how her condition affects her work. I've never really thought of it that way, other than knowing some colors just didn't work in certain situations. It was fascinating to me. And maybe to you too.