Dynamic color theme accros multiple documents on Illustrator

Question

I would like to have the ability to link dynamic colors to elements. Specifically, I'd like to color an element with color 1 in several documents, so that if I decide to change color 1's value from red to blue, all elements colored in my documents with color 1 will turn from red to blue.

This is exactly what you have in CSS+HTML, the HTML code doesn't specify colors, but color variables that are then affected a given color. My question is: how do you create the ilustrator equivalent to the CSS file? (the place where you give values to color variables).

I guess this is very easy to do but I can't find the information online (I'm probably missing the right keywords).

The only solution I found for now is to do it manually by selecting some elements and remapping (inside the selected set of elements) from one color to another. I'm looking for a way to do this in a dynamic way.

PS, It would be interesting to have the same thing with fonts specifications.

Answer 1

It is pretty easy within a single file. You can't really do this across multiple files. At least not that I'm aware of. You can save swatch libraries, and then open those libraries in other files, allowing you to transport swatches between files. However, there's really no such thing as "edit one file and other files change" beyond standard file linking which is more encompassing than merely color use.

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To do this in a single file, all you need do is use Global Color Swatches.

Create swatches of your colors.

With no artwork selected highlight the swatches in the Swatch Panel and using the Swatch Panel Menu, choose Swatch Options...

When the Swatch Options dialog pops up tick the Global checkbox and then OK.

Note how the swatches now have a small white triangle in the lower right corner. The triangle indicates a Global Swatch.

Now simply create your objects, filling them with your global swatches, or recolor what you already have using the global swatches.

Once the artwork is created/colored, you can easily alter...

With nothing selected, double click one of the global swatches. The Swatch Options for that color will appear. You can then change the color and all artwork using that color will update to reflect the color change.

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Once you have your swatch library, you can use Edit > Edit Colors > Recolor Artwork as well.

This question may be helpful: How to change colour of all elements of a group, at once, in Illustrator

And you can use Color Harmonies as well. It can get pretty in-depth. Here's Adobe's help on using the various color features: https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/color-groups-harmonies.html There's merely too much to go into here.