Hey guys. As you may or may not know, I am face blind (prosopagnosia). There are several great sites to help explain what this is and why it happens (links below), but the short version is that I cannot easily recognize faces, even those of close relatives. Unless I see you and interact with you on a daily or near daily basis, I will probably not recognize you. It’s nothing personal. My brain just isn’t wired right for some reason, and I don’t even know why.

It’s a very embarrassing and difficult condition. The thing is, nobody knows about prosopagnosia. If they did, I wouldn’t have to preface the post with this. If they did, Firefox’s spell check probably wouldn’t be underlining it as misspelled. But it’s a huge part of my life. I have to study facebook before family events so I can correctly recognize my aunts, uncles, and cousins (and I still mess up). I don’t recognize people outside of where I normally see them, which is problematic for many reasons. Just today, I failed to recognize the people in the elevator as my classmates, and it would have been an extremely awkward ride to the fourth floor if a friend hadn’t bailed me out. It’s just a very uncomfortable existence, because everybody thinks I just don’t care, or I’m avoiding them or ignoring them. I don’t mean to- I just don’t recognize them.

It is socially devastating.

Now, to the point- I recently discovered that an ad agency in New York designed a series of shirts for the face blind. They’re simple, witty, clean, but don’t turn the condition into a joke or something to be ashamed of. These shirts would open up conversation. They would make life a little less stressful in a world full of complete strangers who know my name.

The problem is that the designs were originally made for the benefit of one of the designers’ relatives, and therefore were only produced in a small run. If I want a shirt or multiple shirts from them, it will cost me $25 each to have them specially made, plus shipping. I’m a designer; I know I could go produce something similar for cheaper, but that would be rude and dishonest, and I would love to see this agency eventually produce the shirts on the large scale for other face blind people out there.

But, I’m also kind of poor. So what I would like to do is open up sketch commissions. I would like to make at least $50 to get two shirts, but if I could reach my goal of $90, that should cover three shirts and the shipping.

If you’re interested in commissioning me to help cover the cost of a few helpful shirts, please send me a message!!

I know it’s not as horribly pressing as raising money for surgery or something, but it would mean a lot to me.

Prosopagnosia at wikipedia

FaceBlind.org

ProsopagnosiaResearch.org

A good article at Time.com

NINDS information page