Drop Shadows

Here's a great tip for getting a better drop shadow effect in Illustrator. While you can control the offset, opacity, and blur settings of a drop shadow, there's really no way to control the thickness. If you try to do this by changing the offset value too much, it'll just make the drop shadow separate from the overlying object and appear to be raised higher. Instead, try this: Create some type and choose Effect>Stylize>Drop Shadow. Use the following settings:

Mode: Normal

Opacity: 100%

X Offset: 2 pt

Y Offset: 2 pt

Blur: 0 pt

Color: Black

It looks nice, but the effect is too thin. To make it thicker, go to the Appearance palette (Window>Appearance), and just duplicate the Drop Shadow item a few times. Each time you duplicate it the drop shadow effect will get thicker.