“As far back as anyone can remember, orange was the ‘look at me’ color, found on road signs and heavy industrial equipment. Orange and plastic, it must be said, were made for each other. But the color embodied a Zen-like transcendence that also endeared it to the avant-garde. From A Clockwork Orange to Andy Warhol’s screen prints . . . using orange was a way of declaring, ‘We’re modern!’ Designers claimed it was the visual equivalent of an exclamation point.

And so it was until the 1990s, when corporations in search of a hipper image gave orange mainstream legitimacy. In 1994, Federal Express abbreviated its name to FedEx and combined orange with offbeat purple for its new look. . . . Orange popped up on Apple computers and redesigned Volkswagen Beetles, then spread like a virus to sneakers, toothbrushes, baby strollers, golf balls, and innumerable Web sites. . . .

Home Depot’s orange logo had a utilitarian tint, but . . . it beckoned the tool-belt-toting individualist in every suburban home. Bit by bit, the color of safety morphed into an emblem of ballsy Bobo capitalism. . . .

This triumphant narrative swelled to a crescendo during 17 days in November 2004, when the ‘Orange Revolution’ erupted on the streets of Kiev, spawning a vast tent city and an orgasm of orange hats, T-shirts, bandannas, scarves, and neckties. Ukrainians wore the color to protest the government’s effort to falsify election results and steal the presidential election from opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko.”

—Andras Szanto, The Color of Revolution, from Print magazine, May/June 2006.