"I see a red track and I know without thinking: This is a drum track"

(by Marc Mozart)

I am using color coding in many areas of my production work. Let's start with the most basic one: on my audio-drive, the files with a red label are not backed up - so I should go ahead and do this before I loose important data! Once backed up, I change the color into green.

This is simple and in fact, many people use the labels. The old Mac OS Classic had them and - after disappering in OS X for a while - they came back with Mac OS X 10.3 "Panther".

Now as we all know, Logic has a color palette that allows us to color our tracks and parts in the arrange window. Actually, let me tell you a little story and then lets take the idea a bit further:

One of the guys I used to work with in the 90s had a great talent for organizing and simplifying things. Actually, I must give him credit for this amazing idea. The genius' name is Alexander Hahn and he is now a well-known personality in the world of advertising and marketing, most famous for inventing the great website slogans.de, the biggest and best databank for german advertising slogans.
In the mid 90s we were co-producing some dance-records together and like his great website today, his songfiles were always extremely logic, well organized and hence easy to work with.

We both had our own studios with mostly identical equipment so we were exchanging song files all the time. Therefore it was extremely important to be well-organized. After all, we wanted to load a song into the computer and start working on it without wasting too much time figuring out what this was all about.
One day he came to my studio and introduced a new color coding system to me. I thought it was great, and I am using it ever since:

the idea is to put instruments in different categories that have all their own unique color code:

red = DRUMS
dark green = BASS
light green = GUITARS
blue = KEYBOARDS (Synthesizer, Organs, Piano, Clavinet, ...)
orange = INSTRUMENTS (all "realistic sounding" Orchestral Instruments)
pink = VOCALS
yellow = EFFECTS (sound effects)

Now we are using these color codes all the time, e.g. in our EXS soundlibrary

as well as in the Arrange Page of Logic.

In Logic Pro 7, even Mixer Channels in the Track Mixer have their own colors. So if you keep the tracks belonging to the same instrument group next to each other, you get this as a result:

You get the idea... color coding makes things so much easier. After I while, I got so used to it that I now see a red track and I know without thinking: "This is a drum track".
Anything I have worked on in the last five years is color coded. If I wanna work on an older song or idea, I am literally "back in the picture" within seconds.

Well, if you're a professional, you might know all this - but it's the same as always. Knowing about a color coding system doesn't save you any time unless you actually start using it!