​"Trade dress" refers to characteristics of the appearance of a product or its packaging or advertising that indicate the source of the product to potential buyers. Trade dress may include shapes, typography and even colors.

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Most former British colonies use red, white and blue in their flags.​Target likes red. But so do Coke, Staples and CVS. UPS like brown, as does Hershey -- but Nestle uses non-chocolatey blue. 

 

If you see a large paperback book with a yellow cover with a big black diagonal band, you should recognize it as a "For Dummies" book.​ 

 

Books in the "Chicken Soup for the" series use the same ornate letter "C" that Campbell's uses on soup cans.​

 

We use purple on our books about publishing. We like purple. So do FedEx, the Catholic Church and the Royal Purple lubricant company. If a soup company can co-exist with a publisher, presumably so can an oil company.

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(UPS truck photo by William Grimes)

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