PINK AND ORANGE
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ife is full of kooky coincidences. In my case, I happen to be married to the woman whose childhood preferences determined the Dunkin’ Donuts color scheme. Back in the early 1970s, her industrial designer mom, Lucia N. DeRespinis, was working on the prototype of a new Dunkin’ Donuts interior. There was to be a beige-and-orange interior as well as donutshaped light fixtures. The graphic designers had, in the meantime, come up with a variety of typeface options, all of which hewed to a beige-and-brown color palette. Poking her nose into the graphics department, DeRespinis wondered aloud why everything was brown. “Well, it’s about donuts,” the graphic designer replied. “That hotdog typeface is great but why not a color?” “It’s donuts.” “Why not make that hotdog typeface orange and pink?” DeRespinis persisted. “Orange and pink are my daughter’s favorite colors. Every birthday party I have ever had for her is ALL orange and pink.” Forty years later, both my mother-in-law and her pink-and-orange donut logo are going strong.
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opened a hamburger stand in the 1950s and even owned a gas station and a Studebaker dealership a decade later. But of course that isn’t why Tim Horton is a household name north of the forty-ninth parallel, nor is his distinguished hockey career—though that doesn’t hurt. In Canada, Tim Hortons is as much a part of the national identity as McDonald’s and Coke are across the border. Dunkin’ Donuts is just a donut chain; “Timmies” is Valhalla. According to Lori Horton, Tim’s widow (the hockey star died in a drunk driving accident in 1974), her husband was a “confirmed donut fanatic from way back.” When he and Lori drove down to see her family in Pittsburgh, he would often go out of his way to stop at a little donut shop in Erie, Pennsylvania, to get a dozen or two for the road. Nonetheless, he more or less stumbled into the donut business when he met and befriended Jim Charade in 1963. The two made a bit of a Felix-and-Oscar combination. The French Canadian Charade was an aspiring R&B drummer and dressed the part in silk suits and loud ties, whereas Horton was almost the cliché of a good-hearted hick.What may have brought them together was that for both of them, the donuts were just the day job. Charade had worked for Vachon, a large wholesale
THE DONUT
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