Using themes in visio

Question

I'm looking for a good reference on how to properly use themes in Visio. Here's been my experience so far:

1. Create a flowchart diagram - nothing fancy, just all black & white. No formatting applied to any object.
2. Select & apply a theme to the diagram. Despite the theme showing a set of matching colors, the diagram now has a single color applied to all objects.
3. Right-click the object, format, fill, and pick a color from the set of matching theme colors.
4. End up with an amalgamation of the original theme color I picked (blue) and the new color (green).

With enough 'playing' with the object, I can get it to look OK, but it feels like I'm missing something, that it shouldn't be this hard to get a matching color. Any advice would be appreciated. :)

Answer 1

It appears that the stencils themselves only have basic color theming functionality unless they're designed to support the "interface". i.e. This page talks about the details.

I agree about the clunkiness of it - I would guess it's a feature that can/should grow in usefulness over time. For example, I'd love it if the color blending would happen at the layer level (e.g. a box within a box gets a different color than its layer below).

But you can see the potential if you create a Work Flow Diagram - those shapes support the advanced theme coloring.