Illustrator’s Live Effects are much more than decorative embellishments. They are powerful appearance attributes that can be used not only to change the look of vector objects, but to solve complex design problems more efficiently. In this course you’ll learn how to work with dynamic appearances and multiple effects while keep your artwork completely editable.

The first section of the course will deal with the foundations of what you need to know to get the most out of your effects. We’ll first look at the all-important Appearance panel. This is the command center when working with effects, so be sure to have it open at all times. We’ll see how to apply multiple effects to objects, text, groups and layers, and how to save complex sets of effects as Graphic Styles that you can re-use on any project. We’ll look at some important preference settings, and what to know before exporting or printing your artwork.

The second half of the course will consist of a series of projects that will use Live Effects to achieve specific results. I’m not going to go through each effect in the menu one-by-one. I don’t want to bore you, and besides, exploring the effects and experimenting with them yourself will spark your imagination and creativity. And by seeing the effects applied to real-world situations, you’ll better understand how you want to use them in your own artwork.

All of the source files will be available for download, so you can deconstruct them and modify them as you wish. At the end of the course, you’ll be equipped to harness the power of live effects for yourself. Thanks for watching, and let’s get started!