Org mode highlights TODO keywords with special faces: org-todo for
keywords indicating that an item still has to be acted upon, and
org-done for keywords indicating that an item is finished. If you
are using more than two different states, you might want to use
special faces for some of them. This can be done using the variable
org-todo-keyword-faces. For example:
(setq org-todo-keyword-faces
'(("TODO" . org-warning) ("STARTED" . "yellow")
("CANCELED" . (:foreground "blue" :weight bold))))
While using a list with face properties as shown for ‘CANCELED’
should work, this does not always seem to be the case. If
necessary, define a special face and use that. A string is
interpreted as a color. The variable org-faces-easy-properties
determines if that color is interpreted as a foreground or
a background color.