There are many ways you can create a UIColor:

Swift

let redColor = UIColor.redColor()
let blueColor: UIColor = .blueColor()

// In Swift 3, the "Color()" suffix is removed:
let redColor = UIColor.red
let blueColor: UIColor = .blue

If the compiler already knows that the variable is an instance of UIColor you can skip the type all together:

let view = UIView()
  view.backgroundColor = .yellowColor()
let grayscaleColor = UIColor(white: 0.5, alpha: 1.0)
let hsbColor = UIColor(
    hue: 0.4,
    saturation: 0.3,
    brightness: 0.7,
    alpha: 1.0
)
let rgbColor = UIColor(
      red: 30.0 / 255, 
      green: 70.0 / 255, 
      blue: 200.0 / 255, 
      alpha: 1.0
  )
let patternColor = UIColor(patternImage: UIImage(named: "myImage")!)

Objective-C

UIColor *redColor = [UIColor redColor];
UIColor *grayscaleColor = [UIColor colorWithWhite: 0.5 alpha: 1.0];