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Participant
October 23, 2026
Open for Voting

Make paragraph and character style features/functions uniform between InDesign and Illustrator

I build brand identity systems that move between InDesign and Illustrator. I set up the same typography system in both apps, but the paragraph and character style features don’t match, so I individually build all the styles in each adobe program (though I don’t get the same features and behaviors).

Features in InDesign that are missing from Illustrator’s styles:

  • Based On: I can’t build a parent/child style hierarchy, so changing a base font means editing every style one by one.
  • Next Style: I can’t chain styles (for example, Headline → Subhead → Body).
  • Nested Styles and GREP Styles: I can’t apply character styles automatically.
  • Style groups (folders): large style sets become an unorganized list.
  • Paragraph rules, borders, and shading.
  • Space Between Paragraphs Using Same Style: I can’t set different spacing between paragraphs that share a style (for example, list items or bullets) than between paragraphs of different styles. In Illustrator, I have to adjust that spacing by hand.

What I’m asking for:

  1. Give Illustrator the same paragraph and character style options as InDesign.
  2. Let me import and export styles between the two apps (or through Creative Cloud Libraries) with all settings intact (similar to the color library .ase files).

Why this would be helpful: Designers and design teams who deliver brand systems and do an array of work need typography to behave consistently everywhere. Right now, keeping the two apps in sync takes manual work and causes errors.

1 reply

jane-e
Community Expert
Community Expert
October 23, 2026

​@olivia_3469 

 

This is the forum for Adobe Aero.

InDesign and Illustrator have separate boards for the Community Forums. Each team uses UserVoice for feature requests. Here are the links,

Be sure to put one feature request per post so the teams can track them and others can comment.

Keep in mind that InDesign is for page layout while Illustrator is primarily a drawing application with some support for Type.

Jane

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