How to Create...

Adding Color and Style to the Mind Map

Now that the mind map is built and formatted nicely, you can personalize it with color and styles. SmartDraw offers Themes and Quick Styles to make this step fast and easy, although there are also the usual Fill and Line Style menus on the Home Tab.

Mind maps begin with a Littoral theme, but there are several others to choose from in the Theme group of the Home tab. For this example, we will apply a Coniferous Theme; select the Theme dropdown menu and click Coniferous. You will notice that the main topic becomes a lighter gray, the topics become sage green, and the subtopics become a slightly darker green. Thanks to SmartDraw's AutoStyle, each level in the mind map automatically has its own color.

The selected Theme affects the Quick Styles and Fill menus; they contain colors that match with the current Theme. To view the full menu of Themes, click the dropdown menu arrow within the Theme group.

A Quick Style applies color, line styles, font types, and more to all selected items. They will differ, depending on which Theme is selected; when the Theme is changed after applying a Quick Style to an object, a parallel Quick Style is applied. For example, in the image below, the box labeled "Quick Style Applied" has a brighter color, black text, and shadow even after the theme has been changed from Littoral to Shrubland.

SmartDraw has already colored each topic layer differently, but suppose you want to change those colors. This is easily done in SmartDraw by selecting all boxes in a level and choosing a Quick Style; click Quick Styles in the Shape Style group of the Home tab and select a style from the menu.

To select several boxes, click on the Select menu in the Tools group of the Home tab, choose Select Multiple, and click on each box in turn. Another method you can use is to hold down the Ctrl key as you left-click the individual objects. Alternatively, select All Shapes from the Select menu, which selects all boxes and any other object besides lines.

For this example, select the topics beneath the main topic (Location, Service, and Advertising) and apply Quick Style Style22 (or another light brown color) from the Shape Style group to contrast the gray color of the main topic (Quick Style Style12). Notice that the topics also now have a shadow.

Next, select the subtopics and apply another contrasting Quick Style to them. For this example, select the same color, but add a beveled effect with Quick Style Style39. Your mind map is now complete, color-coded with new Quick Styles, and set in the Coniferous Theme.