Is this because our brains have been programmed to see Coca Cola can as red? Or does it have something to do with the way the black and white boxes are organized? (I.e. if it were a sprite can, it would still be red)
I think it’s a bit of both. The light blue color used is so called “complement color”, meaning it’s exactly the opposite on the color wheel to the Coca Cola red.
Black and white pattern suggests to our brain to play with contrast.
And of course we all know Coca Cola from all the marketing.
Btw, After staring at it for a while I can kinda switch between red and white at will. Anyone else?
Interesting :) And yes, for me it also became easy to switch once I was aware of the truth of what I was looking at.
If you look directly at the can you can see it as white, but if you look elsewhere and the can is only in your peripheral vision it seems to always be interpreted as red.
It’s effectively your brain doing automatic white balance, it sees everything being tinted cyan so it just sorta subtracts cyan from the area, which results in white being reddish
you can do this physically (by tiring out the colour-sensing cells in your eyes) if you stare at a colour for about 30 seconds then quickly look at a white surface, you should see the inverse of the first colour.
The cyan is the one playing the trick. I can see the black and white nature without zooming when focusing on the logo or something. Sometimes it randomly changes from b/w to red
Is this because our brains have been programmed to see Coca Cola can as red? Or does it have something to do with the way the black and white boxes are organized? (I.e. if it were a sprite can, it would still be red)
I think it’s a bit of both. The light blue color used is so called “complement color”, meaning it’s exactly the opposite on the color wheel to the Coca Cola red. Black and white pattern suggests to our brain to play with contrast. And of course we all know Coca Cola from all the marketing.
Btw, After staring at it for a while I can kinda switch between red and white at will. Anyone else?
Interesting :) And yes, for me it also became easy to switch once I was aware of the truth of what I was looking at.
If you look directly at the can you can see it as white, but if you look elsewhere and the can is only in your peripheral vision it seems to always be interpreted as red.
At the size it is on my phone screen it looks very red. Zooming in makes it look like the red switches to white.
It’s effectively your brain doing automatic white balance, it sees everything being tinted cyan so it just sorta subtracts cyan from the area, which results in white being reddish
you can do this physically (by tiring out the colour-sensing cells in your eyes) if you stare at a colour for about 30 seconds then quickly look at a white surface, you should see the inverse of the first colour.
The cyan is the one playing the trick. I can see the black and white nature without zooming when focusing on the logo or something. Sometimes it randomly changes from b/w to red