Non-Visual People!

This really happened.

In order to get back into the regular habit of writing, a pursuit on which I’ve fallen grievously behind of late, I’ve decided to recycle some pieces I’d previously posted on other platforms. Just to, ya’ know, prime the pump. Herewith, the first::

Since my graphic design career began in 1974 I’ve dealt with many clients on the TNVA spectrum (Total Non-Visual Acuity). A typical conversation might go like this, after days of collaboration and tweaking:

“OK, change that line break, add a paragraph return, move the picture up to the top and it’s good to go. Now, just make it a vertical and send it to the printer. And we need it pronto!”

JUST MAKE IT A VERTICAL!!!!!

Say, maybe that’s where all those vertical smartphone videos come from these days!

In any event, I hadn’t confronted that kind of angst for a while until I got embroiled in a Facebook thread the other day, something I try assiduously to avoid. We were discussing last weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona when a nice chap piped up saying that he saw nothing Cadillac-like in the Cadillac DPi. I countered with the opinion that GM was the ONLY entrant to have taken the “brand identity” mandate seriously when designing its race cars. He couldn’t see it.

I then posted the left half of the above image, pointing to the general angularity of the design; the thin, vertical headlights and taillights; the Cadillac crest graphic integrated into all the various teams’ liveries... even the bespoke wheel design that was highly evocative of the Cadillac V-Series road-going sedan’s wheels.

No dice. A few back and forth comments later, which included other folks involved in the thread, I found the clue I needed when the nice chap mentioned that he drove a Lexus SC 430, to which I responded, “Oh, the one that looks like a larger version of an Audi TT?” His comeback? “NOOOOO. It’s got a beautiful wood and leather interior and it’s FASTER than a Mustang GT! NO RESEMBLANCE AT ALL!”

A quick DuckDuckGo search and a couple of screen grabs later I posted the right side of the above picture.

He still couldn’t see any VISUAL similarity between the two vehicles and right then I realized that any further verbal jousting would be in vain: I was dealing with a completely non-visual person.

Explaining anything visual to a non-visual person is simply impossible; there’s no common frame of reference. It’s as futile as trying to describe the color orange to a blind person.

Visual language is as foreign a language to many (most?) humans as Swahili is to me and that’s just the way it is.

NOTE: Since penning this on March 1, 2022, little has changed except that with the current IMSA GTP rules auto manufacturers seem to have given up any pretense of ​visually aligning their race cars with their road going products. Since nobody notices, why bother? The Caddy still boasts the best sound of them all though! Headphones to eleven recommended: