Adobe Illustrator

A graphic style is a saved set of attributes. You know that the Appearance palette lists all attributes, so you already understand the first step in creating a graphic style—specifying the attributes you want defined in the style. Once you’ve specified stroke and fill settings and added Live Effects, click the New Graphic Style button in the Graphic Styles palette. Alternatively, you can drag the target thumbnail from the Appearance palette and drop it into the Graphic Styles palette. Double-click a style in the Graphic Styles palette to give it a name (which is always helpful). If you Option-click (Alt-click) the New Graphic Style button, you can define a new style and give it a unique name in a single step.

Once you’ve specified your attributes in the Appearance palette, you can use the Graphic Styles palette to create a new graphic style. Notice that when you apply a graphic style to an object in your file, the Appearance palette identifies the target and the style that is applied. This makes it easy to quickly see which style is applied to an object. When a graphic style is applied, the Appearance palette helps you easily identify the target and the applied style.

Note: Sometimes designers need to combine two inks to create a certain effect. For example, package designers often want to mix black ink with a spot color ink. Although you can’t create a swatch that contains two inks, you can create a graphic style that contains two fills. The lower fill is the spot color, the other fill is a percentage of black, set to Overprint. You can then apply the style to any object with a single click. To simulate a multi-ink color, combine two fills and use the Overprint command. The result is a single editable path that contains two colors.