I came across this class at a perfect time. I've been working on a piece of sales collateral with a prominent hero image and I've been torn between a text overlay and trying to place text elsewhere on the piece.

I'm familiar with the appearance panel but hadn't considered it as a solution here. 

I toyed around with a few options - varying colors, multiple strokes, single strokes shadow variations, etc.

 

 

These all ended up looking interesting, but didn't fit well on the piece.

I finally ended up with a single stroke option that worked well. I'm still going to toy around with the appearance panel and other effects, but I'm glad to have this piece of knowledge added to my toolbox. Thanks for the class!