Adobe Illustrator

You probably already have a sense of how powerful appearances and Live Effects are. However, if you have several objects in your file to which you need to apply the same appearance, it can be inefficient to do this manually using Live Effects. Additionally, if you ever need to update the appearance you applied, you would need to do so for each object individually. Graphic Styles can help.

A graphic style is a saved set of attributes, much like a swatch. When you apply a style to an object, that object takes on the attributes that are defined in the style. At any time, you can redefine the attributes of a particular style, and when you do, any objects in your file that already have that style applied are updated as well. The best part about Graphic Styles is how easy they are to use. And you’ll never guess which palette plays an integral part in creating graphic styles—that’s right, the Appearance palette.