Winners get a blue ribbon; losers get the blues. According to color theorists, blue is seen as trustworthy, dependable and committed. It's likely to be a man's favorite color, but women like it, too. It's the Tom Hanks of colors, true-blue and reliable. You couldn't go wrong with Big Blue. Stately institutions including Tiffany, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Chevron and AT&T made it part of their identities to reassure consumers that they'd always be there for them.

Publishing can be a bloody business. A passage in the recently released doorstop from Taschen Books, A History of Advertising, tells the story of how Leo Burnett brought a little extra gore into art directors' lives. In 1940 the company won the account of The American Meat Institute. After the win (its first with a million-dollar budget), three of the agency's staffers drove coast-to-coast in the Leo Burnett truck to determine the best way to get their countrymen to gnash their incisors.

It is, of course, the color of blood. The color of the heart, of passion, conviction, and above all, action. But red is also the color of lunacy - the end of reason. The color of arrest, the STOP sign, as well as the color of anger, embarrassment, infatuation, sin, joy, celebration, rank (the velvet rope) and royalty (the red carpet).

When it comes to art - painting, writing, advertising - everything starts with a white page. The work is to vanquish the white, but to do so in a way that's never been done before. There are as many ways to get rid of the white as there are novels, paintings and banner ads on Earth. Some do it better than others.