Before creating plots, identify the different types of plots you need and decide how to display them so that different types are visually distinct.
You can design styles for plots, labels, and tables. These styles control the appearance of the plots and the information displayed in labels and tables. For more information, see About Parcel Labels and Tables.
You may want to design more than one style for a given plot type. For example, if your project drawings are consulted by several different users who want to see different information emphasized, use styles to provide customized views of the same drawing. Information that is visible in one set of styles can be hidden, de-emphasized, or emphasized in another.
After you design the required styles, you can save them in a drawing template. When you create a new drawing, you can base it on the template, which makes every style in the template available in the new drawing. The necessary styles for a project typically include plot styles, area label styles, segment label styles, and table styles.
Extend the styles concept by using drawing layers to manage how features display. For example, a plot style has a segment layer property, which assigns segments to a particular layer, and a segment color property. Specify the segment color property of a plot style explicitly, or specify it By Layer, which lets you change the color of many segments at once by changing the color of their layer. As you can with styles, save layer definitions in a drawing template.