My mother was a piano teacher, so at an early age I was taught that a keyboard consisted of white keys and black keys. That’s all there were, 88 of them, and by striking them in the right order, one could make music – at least, she could. In fact, if one struck certain keys at the same time, one could make beautiful harmonic tones, while striking the wrong keys at once created dissonant noise. It all depended on how the frequencies of the corresponding notes were related. I was taught early on that when used skillfully, a series of tones could create a musical masterpiece.

Many of us are musically inclined and listen carefully to the subtleties of what we hear, but I suspect that more of us are “visual”, and pay more careful attention to what we see than to what we hear, or smell, taste or touch. Perhaps it is fitting that while my mother was a musician, my father worked for the Eastman Kodak Company, so I was also introduced to “imaging” at an early age. Of course, for years “tones” in imaging meant gradations of black and white. I am old enough to remember that years ago it was not just piano keyboards that came in “black and white”. Images on television were in black and white. Cameras recorded images on a material known as “film” (does anybody remember that?) and prints were then made on photographic paper, in black and white. Back then, we did not go online to learn what was going on in the world – we read it in the daily newspaper, which was printed in black and white.

A young child knows how to color with both black and white crayons, but scientists argue over whether black or white are “colors”. It seems fair to observe that from the perspective of simple physics (the kind I understand), white represents a synthesis of all of the colors in the spectrum of light, while black represents the absence of light. According to the “additive color theory”, white is a color and black is not. On the other hand, painters know that by mixing pigments, one can create black – or at least a very dark color. It is not possible, however, to create white by mixing a series of pigments. According to this alternate “subtractive color theory”, black is a color while white is not. Metaphorically, black and white are often used to denote opposites. In some cultures, white is used to depict “good” and black to depict “evil”; remember that Darth Vader was dressed in black in Star Wars. In some other cultures, white is used to depict death and black is considered to represent life.

Fortunately, for those of us who are visually inclined, the world we see is not black and white, but rather appears in color. The science of color image production has advanced rapidly. Piano keyboards may still be black and white, but almost everything else has moved on. We now see television, newspaper articles, photographs, and images on our cell phones and computer screens in color. If you have been paying attention, the Journal of the American Society of Echocardiography ( JASE ) has, slowly but surely, been using colors to enhance the presentation of the articles we publish. You can see additional evidence of this in the current issue. Depending on when the article was copyedited and produced, some of the papers published in the current issue use colors to emphasize section headings, and colors are used increasingly in tables and figures.

A little background is relevant here. As noted in an Editor’s Page published early last year, JASE developed a process whereby all pages of the Journal could be produced in color. This was done initially so that we would be able to print illustrations in color, at any place on any page. We did this so that authors would not be forced to choose between paying to publish color images, or deciding to publish those images in grey scale (which in essence involves using different combinations of black and white to represent different color values). For example, in some older issues of JASE, you can occasionally see color Doppler flow images that were printed as grey scale images. While I am not an expert in publishing techniques, I understand that printing an article in black and white is relatively easy – it involves printing materials (words, numbers, lines, images) in black on a white background. Printing an article (or portions of that article) in color is a more complicated issue that involves blending a few fundamental colors in order to create a range of hues. The tone of each hue (that is, how “dark” or “light” the hue) also can be adjusted. The process of printing in color clearly is more complicated and more costly. However, thanks to a very effective partnership between JASE’s publisher and the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) publications committee, the ability to print in color on all pages of JASE became a reality in January 2009.

Creating a mechanism to produce JASE as a “color” journal allowed us to begin printing color illustrations at no cost to authors ! More importantly, it allowed us to reproduce illustrations that were true to the original; illustrations showing color Doppler flow images, or strain imaging results, or real-time three-dimensional echo images, could now appear as color images instead of black and white. It also allowed us to use colors in “line art”; that is, in graphical displays such as pie charts, bar graphs, survival curves, and so forth. Rather than displaying results from different groups by using shading or symbols that often were difficult for readers to discern, we now have the capability to use different colors to show these important details. In my view, this makes articles not only more colorful and attractive, but easier to understand.

Starting in this issue of JASE, we have (to borrow a phrase from one of my favorite cooks) “kicked it up a notch”. Our publishing partners at Elsevier have worked with the Journal , and the American Society of Echocardiography (ASE) who owns the Journal , to use colors even more widely. Using the colors in the ASE logo, we have developed a color palette that will allow us to colorize any line art that was submitted by the authors in black and white, if the editors believe that these illustrations will be more effective if printed in color. We still encourage authors to create their line art using colors of their choice, but when they do not take advantage of this opportunity, we can do so. Using colors to highlight key words may also make articles easier for readers to follow. Using colors instead of symbols helps readers to understand the data summarized in many illustrations. Using color shading of alternate lines of tables, which are sometimes complicated, makes it easier for readers to scan across lines of data. Our intent has been to make articles more attractive and easier to read, and we have tried to steer a moderate course between the old-fashioned black and white appearance of older journal articles, and a kaleidoscopic approach where colors are used simply to be colorful and to create interesting patterns, but not necessarily to enhance understanding.

A great deal of thanks is due to our publisher, Jane Grochowski of Elsevier, who has guided publication of JASE with experience and expertise, and also to Carlos Nunez of Elsevier, a skilled designer whose work on upgrading the “look” of JASE is evident in this issue. ASE staff, in particular Jessica Factor, Robin Wiegerink, Cathy Kerr, and Chelsea Flowers, also had important input, and so did the JASE editors.

I am quite pleased with the appearance of the Journal , but I do continue to believe that it is the content of each article that ultimately determines the value of JASE to our readers, our profession, and our patients. We will continue to strive to publish articles that enhance our understanding of important issues, are clinically relevant, and are well written. Our continued ability to move forward in this regard is dependent on a team effort that involves our authors, our peer reviewers, our editors, and our production staff. Publishing articles that look attractive is only one part of that effort. As always, if you have comments or suggestions, I can be reached at jaseeditor@asecho.org .