Chapter 21: Apply Graphic Styles, Symbols, and Actions

Overview

Graphic styles, actions, swatches, and symbols are all different ways to save time and avoid boring, repetitive activity while creating artwork in Illustrator.

Graphic styles are sets of attributes ”such as stroke, fill, transparency, and so on ”that can be applied all at once to any object.

Actions are recorded steps that can be used for anything from applying a complex set of filters to an object to saving a selected object as a browser-compatible GIF image. Illustrator comes with a nice list of carefully defined, useful actions, and it s worthwhile to check them out and use them as needed. Using an action is like applying a set of commands to the chosen artwork. In other applications, this process is referred to as using a macro. When you apply an action, it s as if you applied a series of steps to a piece of artwork.

Swatches can save you time by storing commonly used colors. If your client provides you with a set of defined colors for his or her project, stash them in the Swatches palette to save time in designing the project.

Symbols are graphic objects that can be placed in artwork. What s special about them is that they can be easily updated or replaced throughout an illustration.