4 Brand Designers Previewed Illustrator’s Newest Feature: Here’s What They Said

As designers, we all know that having a productive workflow is everything. Which is why it’s all the more exciting when our beloved apps and software products roll out changes that help us do what we do best, faster.

That’s precisely what Illustrator is doing with the inclusion of Global Editing in the new Illustrator CC 2019. With just a single click, designers can instantaneously rotate, transform, or change the colors of all similar objects across all artboards. Long gone are the days of manually editing a single logo or icon across an entire brand guide. Enter an era of edit once, done forever.

Given its advantages in editing repeating logos and UI elements, we expect Global Editing to have a powerful impact on brand identity and web designers alike. So, we asked a handful of our top-ranking designers from 99designs to preview the new feature.

Here’s what these professional designers had to say, in their own words.

Andrea Stan****

Location: Brasov, Romania

99designs Portfolio: Mky

Instagram: @i.am.mky

Andrea is one of 99designs’ top brand identity designers and a self-proclaimed fan of logos, patterns and letters. Here’s what she had to say about Global Editing’s application for patterns:

Designs by 99designs designer Mky.

If you are a pattern designer, or just a human who enjoys the extremely relaxing process of creating patterns, then Adobe Illustrator’s new Global Editing Feature will make you say “waaa” and “hell yes!” over and over again!

Using it is quite simple, but it requires you to be extra attentive. Otherwise, you will wind up doing tons of editing with no results.

So, let’s say you have a rough version of the shape/element that you want to duplicate to create the pattern. You can just leave it like that, rough and imperfect, then arrange the pattern and work on smoothing/polishing the element later. Why not finish the element first and then do the pattern, you ask? Because this way you can see the pattern as a whole while editing, not just the one element. This gives you a better view and helps you see the end product faster!

You just have to select one shape/element, click on Start Global Edit and there you go. In this case I had a group of more paths and luckily that works too!

After you click, all similar elements will be highlighted except the selected element, which will remain fully editable.

As opposed to selecting a group, you can also select just one path from the group using the Direct Selection Tool. Click Start Global Edit and there you go again.

Similarly, you can edit the line width, colors and apply effects as well. How cool is that?!

Just make sure you select Start Global Edit every time, otherwise the changes you made to that one element will not apply to the rest.

To sum it all up, I’d say the new feature is easy to use and (especially for pattern designers) super useful!

Anton Proskuryakov

Location: Snezhinsk, Russia

99designs Portfolio: goopanic

Another top-ranking branding designer, Anton demonstrates how the Global Edits feature saves time and energy when designing product packaging, web pages and logos:

Designs by 99designs designer goopanic.

Adobe Illustrator’s new Global Editing feature comes in really handy in the case of packaging design, especially when you have a few identical symbols or design elements on different sides of the box, like in the example below:

This is the Sphero 2 lamp box design that I created for Brightech. It has two sets of icons advertising the main features of the product: one on the front and one on the back. When you activate the Global Editing feature on the “glass diffused light feature” icon, for example, Illustrator detects all copies of this icon in the document. By changing one of them, you can change them all. You can see an indication of the Global Editing design feature on the image below:

This new feature will save me a lot of time during the packaging design process. Before, if the client wanted to change something in the design, I’d have to change it on one side of the box and then make a copy of it and place it on the other side of the box. Now I don’t have to worry about the positioning of the copied items, I can just change one of them and all instances will be changed accordingly.

The same is true for the website design process, when you have multiple instances of the same item on different artboards.

Or even when you make logo design presentation elements in Adobe Illustrator, like in the example below:

If I have to change something in the logo on these tags, I just need to activate Global Editing feature and change only one instance of the logo. The other one will be changed automatically.

Gerard Keely

Location: Wexford, Ireland

99designs Portfolio: Spoon Lancer

Instagram: @spoonlancer

As a brand designer, client-favorite Gerry creates a lot of logos and websites. Here, he describes how Global Editing streamlines his workflow:

Designs by 99designs designer Spoon Lancer.

This feature is a real game changer when it comes to making edits, particular to large/complex artworks.

Every project requires you to go back and make edits, often a lot of them, which can sometimes be painfully annoying and slow. This feature fixes that by allowing you to make edits to your whole artwork in one click. It’s super easy and quick. I love how it allows you to easily play around with color combos, even on larger artworks.

Sam Chang

Location: Oakland, California

Role: Associate Product Designer at 99designs

Instagram: @samchangsucks

As an associate product designer at 99designs, Sam works as a designer among designers. Here he explains how Global Editing saves UX designers like himself time and makes their job easier.

Icon designs by Sam Chang for Google VR.

The new Global Edits feature in Adobe Illustrator is definitely a game changer for me. This feature will significantly improve my workflow as a UX designer. I can already imagine the time and energy I’ll be saving when I’m editing a common UI component or swapping out an old icon. I especially liked how easy it was to set up and the convenience of starting Global Editing in the Quick Actions panel.

Takeaway: What global editing can do

The positive responses from these four professional designers confirm that Global Editing accomplishes what it set out to do: provide a faster and more efficient way to edit complex and combined elements without altering them irreparably.

It’s no wonder Global Editing has been called a game changer. Considering how well it’s been received already, it seems this Illustrator feature has been worth the wait.

How will Global Edits fit into your workflow? We want to hear your thoughts, so tweet us @99designs or share a comment now.