The changes you make to fonts and colors will only affect what is displayed on your own desktop. When you send an instant message, the recipient will not see the colors you have set up for yourself--they will see whatever they have set up for themselves.

• Click on the arrow(s) to the right of the drop-down box to select a different font face or size for the various text types (ie tag line, most recent message, previous messages).
• Choose System Colors (whatever your Windows system colors are set to) by checking the box for System Colors.
• Uncheck the box for System Colors to choose a customized color scheme of background and text colors for your instant messages.

  More on Choosing Colors.

Next we will look at selecting Conversation Alerts Settings.