Skip to content

Katy Kirby

← Adobe Illustrator

My feedback

1 result found

  1. AI Design Merge for Symbols: Apply Structural Changes While Preserving Style

    2 votes

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback
    Signed in as (Sign out)
    Close
    Close

    We’ll send you updates on this idea

    2 comments  ·  Illustrator (Desktop) Feature Requests » Symbols  ·  Admin →
    How important is this to you?

    We're glad you're here

    Please sign in to leave feedback
    Signed in as (Sign out)
    Close
    Close
    An error occurred while saving the comment
    Katy Kirby commented  · 

    Thanks for asking for a more complex example — sharing one here to better illustrate the workflow.
    In this scenario:

    File 1 contains two versions of the same symbol:

    a base design
    and an updated version that introduces structural changes (e.g., pocket shape, seam placement, proportions)

    File 2 contains multiple color variants of the original design, where each variant has its own unique distribution of color across different regions of the garment

    Goal
    Apply the structural updates from File 1 across all variants in File 2 while preserving each variant’s existing color logic.

    Why this is difficult today
    The challenge is not just transferring shapes — it’s maintaining the relationship between structure and color across multiple variants:

    When geometry changes (e.g., pockets or seams), the underlying regions that define where colors are applied also change
    Each variant has a different color layout, so the result cannot rely on a single shared appearance
    There is no way to automatically detect how updated structural elements should inherit or map to the correct color regions in each variant

    This results in a highly manual process:

    Rebuilding or re-mapping color regions for every variant
    Reapplying fills and details individually
    Repeating the same update across all colorways

    Desired capability
    A workflow that can:

    Compare two related design states (original and structurally updated)
    Detect and apply structural changes to a target set of variants
    Preserve each variant’s existing color placement, even when the underlying geometry has changed

    This becomes especially important in symbol-based workflows, where a single structural update needs to propagate cleanly across many variations without breaking or redefining the visual styling in each one.
    Let me know if helpful to expand further — happy to share more about our workflow to help further explain.

    Katy Kirby shared this idea  ·