Illustrator in 60 Seconds: How to Use the Appearance Panel

Welcome to our Illustrator in 60 Seconds series, in which you can learn an Illustrator skill, feature, or technique in just a minute!

Illustrator in 60 Seconds: The Appearance Panel

Keeping track of your artwork's appearance can sometimes prove to be a tedious task, especially if you have a lot of visual effects.

Luckily for us, Illustrator comes with a central hub from where we can easily edit and adjust all of these effects on the fly.

If you've never used the feature before, I strongly advise you give this little video a go since it will show you all the basics that you need to be aware of in order to start using the Appearance panel.

How to Use the Appearance Panel in Illustrator

The Appearance panel is located on the right-side toolbar and it allows you to view and adjust all the visual attributes of a selected object without altering its underlying structure.

Each time you select an object, it will show you all the visual properties that are currently applied, indicating if you're dealing with a Path or Type.

If you select an object that has just been created, the Appearance panel may only display the three main attributes that define it which are its Stroke, Fill, and Opacity.

You can add multiple strokes to your object by simply clicking on the Add New Stroke button and then playing with your settings.

And you can also add visual effects using the Add New Effect button which will bring up a bunch of categories that you can select from.

Want to see this in action? Check out the quick video above to see this lesson at work!

A Bit More Detail

Want to learn more about Adobe Illustrator's vast tools and settings? Check out these tutorials below:

• Roundups
  The A to Z of Adobe Illustrator
  Mary Winkler
• Graphic Design
  10 Illustrator Tools Every Designer Should Be Using
  Andrei Stefan
• Icon Design
  How to Scale Icons Correctly in Adobe Illustrator
  Andrei Stefan
• Icon Design
  Comparing the Two Methods for Creating Line Icons: Offset Paths vs. Strokes
  Andrei Stefan

60 Seconds?!

This is part of a series of quick video tutorials on Envato Tuts+ in which we introduce a range of subjects, all in 60 seconds—just enough to whet your appetite. Let us know in the comments what you thought of this video and what else you'd like to see explained in 60 seconds!