Text as Symbol - changing colours

[recedo]

Hi there,

First post here, great software... I'm a Lightroom/Photoshop user but needed a vector tool and wasn't prepared to pay the subscription for Illustrator so very impressed with AD so far!

I am using AD to create wedding stationery. In order to keep my workflow simple when creating designs for clients I am making use of several artboards in one document (one for each item of stationery), global colours and symbols. I have made a symbol from a simple text object which includes the bride and groom's names. What I would like to do is be able to change the colour of one or more instance of this text while still being able to change the wording itself, however if I create a new instance of a symbol, switch off the sync button, change the colour and then switch back on the sync button the wording itself seems to be un-linked.

Is there a way I can achieve this? Am I missing something simple?

An example of what I am trying to achieve;

One artboard for a Save the Date card - Bride and Groom's name in pink. Another artboard for a save the date card - bride and grooms name in exactly the same font but in a different colour and larger size. I want to be able to change the name of the bride and groom in one instance and it change in all, including the one with the different colour.

Thanks in advance

Simon

[Dave Harris]

I'm afraid the granularity of symbols doesn't allow what you want to do directly. The main reasons is that each character of the text can have a different colour, so if you edit the text it would be tricky to match the colours to the right characters in different symbols. However You might be able to use a Colour Overlay filter effect to overwrite the text's own colour. This will also force the text to be output as raster rather than vector. I hope this helps.

[recedo]

6 minutes ago, Dave Harris said:

I'm afraid the granularity of symbols doesn't allow what you want to do directly. The main reasons is that each character of the text can have a different colour, so if you edit the text it would be tricky to match the colours to the right characters in different symbols. However You might be able to use a Colour Overlay filter effect to overwrite the text's own colour. This will also force the text to be output as raster rather than vector. I hope this helps.

Great, thanks for the confirmation. Will have a look at using an overlay instead and see how that works out. Just trying to streamline my workflow as much as possible to keep costs down.

Thanks again