The Illustrator Appearance panel, explained for text effects
The Appearance panel (Window › Appearance) is where fills, strokes and live effects stack on an object. Rows higher in the list paint on top. Many editable text effects are built here (Type on a Path, character formatting and Touch Type are editable routes outside it), and JuicyType's effects appear here too, as live effects you can reorder or remove.
The manual way, in Illustrator
- Select the text and open Window › Appearance (Shift+F6). On type you see a Characters row, which holds the font's own fill and stroke, plus Opacity; anything you add sits above or below it.
- Add rows with the Add New Stroke and Add New Fill buttons; drag them to reorder. Lower rows paint behind, so a stroke below Characters grows out from behind the letters.
- Click the fx button (Add New Effect) to apply live effects to the whole object, or to a single row when that row is selected.
- Click an effect name to reopen and edit it; drag a row to the bin to remove it. Save the stack with the Graphic Styles panel.
Selecting characters with the Type tool shows a different, character-level stack; select the object with the Selection tool to build effects.
Menu paths checked against Adobe's current Illustrator documentation; hands-on verification and screenshots are still to come.
3 effects in JuicyType
JuicyType uses the same panel, so anything you learn here applies to its effects, and its effects sit alongside Illustrator's.
Common questions
Why does an effect apply to only part of my text?
It was added while a single row was selected. Click the object name at the top of the panel first to target the whole object.