I just got my file download site set up so that I can post images of stuff that I talk about. Color schemes, as I was blogging earlier, are the easiest way to improve the appearance of your drawing. Color schemes are not treated equally in all drawing types. For example, they don’t even appear in the document’s right-click menu for technical drawings. And a single color scheme (like Sunset) might look different in a timeline than in a process flowchart. So you’ll have to try on different schemes by drawing type to see which one fits your purpose.
Here’s a couple examples. The default Timeline in Visio 2003 looks has a default color scheme. Personally, I think this isn’t the most attractive thing I’ve seen, so I immediately change it to Sunset. But I also think that Jade and Coffee look pretty good, depending on what the timeline is about.
If you build an org chart from the Organization Chart solution, your default org chart looks like this. Nothing too exciting. Color schemes are sort of available for this one. You can access them from the document right-click menu but they provide a pallid version of how it looks in other diagrams. I think the nicest one is Forest or Sunset. Better than the default color setup, for sure.
If you build a process flowchart from the Basic Flowchart stencil, you get a pretty nice default color. But it looks even better when you put on the Primary or Coffee color scheme.
You get the idea…the trick is to play around with it and figure out what your favorite color scheme is by drawing type (org chart, timeline, process flowchart, etc.) and get in the habit of applying it as soon as you create your drawing. That way, when you add shapes to your drawing, they will conform to the color scheme that you like.
-- Mai-lan
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