Illustrators Character Styles don't really make sense?

[cropher]

In InDesign, I can simply design a paragraph using a paragraph style and then apply deviations (such as bolding) via a character style, because I can create a paragraph style that contains the sole information "style: bold". So that when I change the font in the paragraph style, the character style will simply apply the bolding to the new font.

In Illustrator, however, I need to select a font for the character style before I can select the style. This means that if I change the font in the paragraph style, I would also have to update it in the character style. Which makes the character style somewhat useless.

Am I missing something?

[Monika Gause · Accepted solution]

No you're not missing something.

Please make a feature request to: http://illustrator.uservoice.com

[cropher]

Thanks for the response, Monika. Just submitted my request.

I also realized I can't base paragraph styles on other paragraph styles. Illustrator needs to catch up with InDesign in that regard.

[Javier Gómez Laínez]

I 100% agree with you. If you are acostumed to the InDesign way of life, where a character style only introduces a small variation to a paragraph style (font, color, size), then characters styles in Illustrator are nearly useless.

Also, you can't base a paragraph style in other paragraph style, so I think that's why no one uses character or paragraph styles in Illustrator, only for very simplistic projects.

I'm dealing now with a project that uses the same text with two different colors and 4 different locations in a label, for more than 100 different labels, so it's a real nightmare to control the type size and color of every single line the way Illustrator implements the paragrah and character style features.

[Doug A Roberts]

I believe this is the OP's uservoice request:

https://illustrator.uservoice.com/forums/333657-illustrator-desktop-feature-requests/suggestions/389...

Could do with more votes. It would be wonderful of course to have InDesign's level of control in Illustrator, but I doubt it's going to be a priority any time soon.