Neon Effect In Illustrator

In this post, I’ll show you how to create an awesome neon sign effect in Illustrator!

Neon effects are back and trending. I think you’ll love exploring their potential. Use neon effects to highlight typography, create nifty digital art, add special effects to videos and animations, and create eye-catching logos.

I’ll start with a quick shortcut to show you how you can create the neon effect in just a few seconds and then move to the real deal, a technique that delivers that lifelike neon glow. 

This quick and easy tutorial is based on one of the classes from my Illustrator Advanced Course, recently updated with incredible new content! If you’re new to graphic design, my  Illustrator Essentials Course might be the right fit for you. Wait no longer and start your journey from Zero to Superhero!

Let 's jump in!

The “Cheat” (or How to use Neon Effect Graphic Styles)

Ok, it’s not exactly cheating. Illustrator has some built-in neon effect graphic styles that really help you speed up your workflow when you’re short on time and not looking for the most realistic finish. How do they work? Let’s have a look!

Begin by typing out your text. I’ll be placing mine over a brick wall to add some depth to my composition. This background image is part of the course resources available for students at BYOL. You can pick any image you like. 

Now, I’ll show you something really cool. To find the neon graphic styles, go to Help on your top menu and click on Illustrator Help. There’s also a shortcut for this, hit F1 to open the Discover Panel. Next, type neon in the Search field and Illustrator will show you at once some matching links. The cool thing is: if you hover your mouse over each one of these options, Illustrator will show where they can be found across your workspace. As you can see in the example below, you can find the preset Neon Effects under Window, Graphic Style Libraries, and Neon Effects.

Click on the Neon Effects Graphic Style Libraries link in the Discover panel and the Neon Effects panel will pop up on your screen. Use the Selection tool to select your text and click on the available presets to find the one that fits the goals of your project.

Done, and in just a few seconds! It’s so easy that it almost feels like we’re cheating! Now let’s see what’s going on behind this effect. Select your text. We need to open the Appearance panel to learn more. Click on Window on the top menu and then Appearance in the drop-down menu or hit the shortcut keys Shift + F6 on both Mac and PC.

Inside the Appearance panel we can see our text object’s structure set in two sections: Type and Characters.

Type holds settings related to the entire text object. Any changes made in Type will affect the text as a whole, regardless of individual characters.

Characters allow us to adjust properties for each letter or character within the text. We can edit settings like fill color and stroke, or even effects like drop shadows or glow.

Looking at the Appearance panel above, we can see that the neon effect that changed our text is actually a sequence of combined strokes. Holding different colors and weights, they combine together to create a subtle color gradient effect that reminds us of how real neon lights look.

This looks pretty good and is super easy, but we’re aiming for that next-level set of skills that will help us become true professional designers and create awesome visuals like this:

Can you spot the differences? I’m sure you can! Let’s push on and learn how we can do it, stress-free!

The Way Pros Do It (or How to design a Neon Sign Effect in illustrator)

1.     Write your message

It all begins with a text object, so let’s type the message we want to make glow on a wall or a late-night diner’s window.

We’ll be using the Appearance panel to guide our steps throughout this tutorial, so use Shift + F6 to bring it up and keep it close to your Artboard. To create our fully customized neon sign effect, we’ll be working with a series of color fills and effects, so let’s tackle the first immediately.

2.     Add New Fill

With the text object selected, let’s add a new Fill to the Type section. Click on the Add New Fill button at the bottom of the Appearance panel.

Let’s click on the Fill color to open the drop-down window and pick our first color.We’ll be picking a gradient fill and knock it up a level!

3.     Gaussian Blur effect

Now things get interesting! If you ever look at a neon sign at night, you notice that the light it casts doesn’t have solid edges, right? Neon signs produce halo effects, an optical phenomenon where a bright shape appears around the light source. Halos give lights a blurry and dreamy vibe.

Let’s replicate that halo effect by adding Gaussian Blur to our gradient fill. At the bottom of the Appearance panel, click on the Add New Effect button, the one with the fx icon. Next, hover over Blur and then click on Gaussian Blur.  

Gaussian Blur creates a soft, blurred appearance around an object. We can set its intensity by adjusting the radius values, dragging the Radius slider or typing a specific number in the numeric field next to it.

Let’s begin with a low value, keeping the first step subtle. Light scatters more as it moves away from its source.

4.     Add another Color Fill level

Let’s scatter the light more. With the first Fill level selected, move down to the bottom of the Appearance panel and click on the Duplicate Selected Item button, the one with a + sign.

This adds a new Fill to our text object. Picking the one on top, we’ll leave the color as it is, and click on Gaussian Blur to edit its settings. Let’s double the number we’ve set for the first level, we can go a bit higher or lower, depending on the font style, weight, and size we are working with.

5.     Refine the halo effect with extra Fill levels.

Let’s add a third level and really disperse the light away from its source. To do this, we repeat the previous step. With the top Fill selected, click on Duplicate Selected Item, don’t change the color and click on Gaussian Blur. Let’s aim for a higher value to create that misty look and pick a number around ten times the first we’ve set. Once again, we can try some higher or lower radius values until we’re happy with the halo we’ve cast. 

6. Bring the light source up to the center of the sign

When we started, I told you that a text object contains two sections, both visible on the Appearance panel. We’ve been working so far with the Type section, where we edit the object as a whole. Now, let’s bring the character to the top!

We can arrange the Appearance panel’s levels as we do with layers on the Layers panel, so let’s click and drag the Characters layer all the way to the top. We can’t move it above Type – Characters are always “stored” inside that section.

Let’s keep their settings unchanged, the text was first typed out with a white color fill, so we’ll keep that way. To make it realistic, we still want to add a slight blur to our light source, so we’ll create another Fill duplicate. Next, we click and drag it over the Characters level and edit the Gaussian Blur radius close to 1.

Wow! It is looking really great! Now let’s move on to the finishing touches!

Pro Tip: Applying these effects to a text object and making them as real and detailed as possible can really ask a lot from your computer’s resources and slow Illustrator down. Here’s how we can keep this under control: 

Click on Effect from the top menu and select Document Raster Effects Settings.

Why do we go there?

Effects like Gaussian Blur, Drop Shadow, Inner Glow, and Outer Glow generate pixels, so the objects to which we apply them (or a part of those objects) are no longer fully vector-based.

Check the resolution value (set in ppi, or pixels per inch). A 300 ppi resolution gives you high detail and a less pixelated effect, but really stretches your computer’s work memory, so the trick is keeping this down to Screen mode (72 ppi) or Medium mode (150 ppi) while you are designing and push it up to High mode when it’s all finished up and ready to export.

Timeout #1

There are some key principles that you should master if you want to add energy and style to your designs. Learn valuable tips about light and shadow in graphic design in this article.

7. Finishing Touches

Now our Neon Sign Glow Effect is shining, we need to make sure everything is perfect before sending the artboard up for production or print. Zoom in and out as many times as you need to check everything thoroughly.

I’ll show you an example of a problem that happens frequently when working with this kind of effect.

This may be a little hard to spot, but there’s a cut on the halo before it completely fades away from the source. This happens because the raster effect is spreading beyond the vector object’s boundaries.

Let’s go back to the Document Raster Effects Settings window and fix this. Look for the Create Clipping Mask option and click on it to activate it if it’s not checked. Next, we add some extra room for our halo to spread. I’ll type a high number, just to make sure nothing gets cut out. Click on OK and we’re done! It all looks flawless! Celebrate a job well done!

8.     Saving the Neon Sign Glow Effect as a Graphic Style

Took you a long time to fine tune this effect? Are you quite satisfied with the result? That’s great! Now you can save all these settings for future projects! How do we do it? Quick and easy!

If you can’t find the Graphic Styles tab in the Appearance panel, click on Window from the top menu and then on Graphic Styles to open it up. There’s also a shortcut for this: Shift + F5 on both Mac and PC.

With our text object selected, we click on the New Graphic Style button. Next, we double-click on the new style’s thumbnail and edit its name. Click on OK and we’re all set!

Now let’s test our new Graphic Style!

Let’s type a new message and select it with the Selection tool. Next, we move to the Graphic Styles panel and click on our “Neon Glow” graphic style’s thumbnail.

Timeout #2

Want to learn more about Neon Graphic Design and get inspired? Check this article and dive deep into the vivid world of light and color!

Boom! With one single click (and a couple of retouches), we’re looking at a brand-new neon sign. How awesome is this? How many projects like this are already jumping up and down inside your brain?

Oh, one more thing!

This effect also works on shapes and paths!

And there we have it!

This was one exciting post to write, I hope you’ve felt the same as you followed along.The possibilities and combinations are endless, so I encourage you to challenge your imagination and share your artworks with the BYOL community! Have fun!

What 's Next?

To go deeper with Illustrator, join BYOL and you will gain access to my Illustrator Essentials and Advanced courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Figma, Photoshop,  Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Get started here.  

See you in class! – Dan