: How do I achieve this "Out of Sync"/mis-registration fill style in Adobe Illustrator? What is an easy way to achieve this "Out of Sync" Color Fill style? I'm using Adobe Illustrator CS6 and

@Megan533

To make things easy for yourself when editing later, it pays off to do a bit more work upfront by using the Appearance panel for this.


Draw a shape
Give it any fill and no stroke
Open the Appearance panel
Select your shape with the Move tool (V)
Choose Add New Stroke, either through Appearance panel options
or with the icon bottom leftmost on the panel
Give the new stroke the desired colour and weight in the
Appearance panel
With the stroke still selected in the panel, choose Effect >
Distort & Transform > Transform... and use the Move settings to
change the stroke's position. Click OK.


This way, the stroke and the fill are both controlled by the same shape. If you alter the shape in any way, both fill and stroke will change accordingly. This saves you the burden of having to make the exact same changes to a shape twice.

As an added bonus, you can drag the shape into the Graphic Styles panel to store its settings later. If you select another shape and then click the graphic style, it will change its appearance to the style. Saves you the time to reproduce the exact same transformation over and over again.

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@Hamaas979

I am not aware of any preference set-up to achieve the out of register look but simply 'copy' the object with the stroke and fill, then 'paste in front', then nudge it until it is the desired distance apart, remove the stroke from the lower layer, then remove the fill in the layer above.

Set the stroke to 'overprint' or else it may 'knock-out'.

Perhaps that is what you have already done.

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@Bryan765

Color your artwork without borders
Copy artwork
Delete fill of copied artwork, add border
shift copy left/right according to taste

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