Effect styles (effect symbols)

So with the recent news of improved text styles, I’d love to see a similar thing for effects. So they can be separated from layer styles.

In fact. What I’d love to see is something like effects and layer styles use the same workflow as symbols. You define a layer style and you can decide what attributes can be overridden. Or one further…nested.

Let’s say we have a layer style with a corner radius and a drop shadow. I would love to be able to:

a. hide some of those attributes on an instance of that style
b. decide which attributes can be overridden on an instance
c. add another layer style into a layer style attribute

C. Being the most interesting. If I have an additional layer style, which just has a drop shadow, on my first style I would love to be able to set this layer style under the drop shadow and have it inherit. It’s kind of like design tokens, but expressed visually.

I’d also love for text to work the same way. So I could have a text style with caps, one with a line height and mix and match.

It all broadly follows the current pattern of the way symbols and overrides work today. I hope this makes sense, happy to do doodles if desired.

Thanks for sharing, Ash!