What Color Is A Hot Dog?
A silly question with a complicated answer
During a recent phone call, I was asked, “What color is a hot dog?” Without hesitation, I responded, “It’s complicated,” then abruptly ended the call.
I receive so many emails asking for interviews, and I try to weed them out, but the “I promise I’ll make it fun” in the email note intrigued me.
Everything in my intuition said, “This is a red flag; don’t waste your time,” but who doesn’t love some fun?
I get asked these questions all the time, but they’re usually about color for the home, not food, so “What color is a hot dog?” on some level, did sound like a fun topic to discuss.
After my ” It’s complicated” remark, it got me thinking about when I worked for a New York wallpaper company as a Color Matcher way back in the day. It was the best job ever, and it was exciting to be part of designing the colorways for wallpaper.
One day, while in the design studio, my boss brought me a rock the size of a lemon and placed it on my desk.
“We need a wallpaper to match this rock.” He said, then walked out of the room.
I picked up the rock, held it close to my face as if looking at a diamond through a loop, and noticed dozens of colors that made up the “color” of this rock.
How do I mix a handful of colors that represent the overall hue of a rock?
As a color expert with a keen eye for color, it was easy for me to create the colorway, but it was “complicated” to explain to the team how I mixed many colors to create one very specific color.
The complications unfold as the lighting changes. It also depends on who is looking at the rock. Some people are color blind, and some people hold the rock differently, making its color morph into another shade. Some people look at a different spot on the rock, seeing a totally different set of colors than I did.
So, how did I come up with the color of a rock? I squinted.
When you squint, you get a starting color as the baseline of the object you are looking at, but hurry; as time ticks on, the light around you changes.
So, what color is a hot dog? It has many colors, many shades, many tones, and many hues, and undertones. It is a reflection of the light around you. It is the perception of what you think a color is that only YOUR eyes can see. It varies, and it’s, well, complicated.
