I was going to suggest using BaseStyle as in
Plot[x, {x, 1, 3}, AxesLabel -> ({"LabelA", "LabelB"}),
BaseStyle ->
Directive @@ {FontFamily -> "Helvetica", 12, Italic,
FontColor -> Red}]
which would also color the text in font used on the ticks. However they could be separately set as in
Plot[x, {x, 1, 3}, AxesLabel -> ({"LabelA", "LabelB"}),
BaseStyle ->
Directive @@ {FontFamily -> "Helvetica", 16, Italic,
FontColor -> Red},
TicksStyle ->
Directive @@ {FontFamily -> "Helvetica", 10, FontColor -> Black}]
However, if you are using Mathematica 10, you will see that the color of the Labels is not Red. This is a bug...and it worked in Mathematica 9. I filed a bug report. It turns out that it is a known bug. Hopefully it will get fixed in a later version of Mathematica.