Creating Ancient Type in Illustrator

One secret of top digital designers is to use the worst features of a program and make them work. This idea may seem illogical, but part of good design is to think of things that others don’t. Most people never waste time deliberately using the worst part of a program! Well, you heard it here first: This technique for creating ancient-looking type combines the Auto Trace tool (arguably, one of Illustrator’s worst tools) with the Rasterize command (a command that you normally want to avoid) to create a happy accident! Just follow these steps:

1. Create some large text.
Any text will do, but fonts with big serifs, such as Adobe Garamond, work best, as shown in Figure 2-15. You also get better results if you use large text (60 pt or more).

Well, it’s a start — but the Auto Trace tool only works with pixel data. Before we can use the text, we need to convert it to pixels by using the Rasterize command. That’s next.

2. Select the text with the Selection tool and choose Object➪Rasterize.
The Rasterize dialog box appears. Select a Resolution of 72 ppi, set the Background to White, and select the Art Optimized (Supersampling) for Anti-Aliasing. Leave the rest of the settings at their defaults and then click OK. Your text converts automatically to pixels. (Pretty neat, eh?)

3. Choose the colors for the Auto Trace tool to use.
The Auto Trace tool detects only the shapes of what it traces — not the color — so you have to determine in advance what colors to use. Click the Auto Trace tool, set its Stroke to Black and its Fill to None. Because you do this before you start using the tool, the objects that the Auto Trace tool creates are set to these colors.

4. Click the Auto Trace tool and trace the letters.
The Auto Trace tool creates paths around highly contrasting areas (such as between the black text and its white background). You have the best luck with this tool if you remember the following:
• To Auto Trace a solid letter (such as H or T), click anywhere in the dark area of the letter.
• To Auto Trace a letter with a hole in it (such as A, O, or P) first click the inside edge of the hole, where the dark meets the white. If you click the outside of the letter first, the whole thing fills in with black, hiding the inner hole!

By and large, the poor old Auto Trace tool isn’t very consistent. Whenever you click a dark solid, Auto Trace traces the whole thing properly; but to trace a white area, you have to click its edge. Don’t worry that the white holes fill with black when you Auto Trace them. You can take care of this later by using the Compound Path command.

5. After you trace all the letters, click the rasterized type with the Selection tool and delete it.
Not to worry; the project doesn’t use the rasterized type anyway (except as something to trace). It just gets in your way, so get rid of it! You’re now ready to add the finishing touches by using the Compound Path command to poke holes in your text (in letters such as P, O, and B).

6. Click and drag over those letters (by using the Direct Selection tool), and then choose Object➪Compound Path➪Make.
Make sure that you select the hole and the main part of the letter. This makes the holes completely see-through, as any hole should be. Repeat this step for each letter, one letter at a time.

7. Fill your text with black and set the stroke to None.

Making Text Three-Dimensional in Illustrator

Gradients are great for giving dimension to things. Unfortunately, gradients work only when you fill areas with them, and your only options are radial or linear gradients. Gradients don’t flow along strokes, and you can’t make them match complex shapes. Or can you? By using the Blend tool, you can create gradients in any shape your heart desires!

1. Create your text.
Any text will do, but large, fat, sans-serif text works best. We use 100-point Antique Olive Black.
2. Select the text with the Selection tool and then choose Type➪Create Outlines.
As a first step in modifying your text to extremes, you have to turn it into paths.
3. In the Color palette (Window➪Color), set the Fill to None and the Stroke to Black. Use the Stroke palette (Window➪Stroke) to set the stroke to 1 point ( pt).
This handy trick makes the paths of the text easier to see and work with.
4. Simplify the type.
Strategically delete path segments of the letters by clicking them with the Direct Selection tool and pressing the Delete key, one segment at a time. The goal here is to create letters that are single, continuous lines, where the inner-tube is gone.
5. Round off the corners and ends of the path.
Choose Window➪Stroke, click the Stroke palette’s pop-up menu, and then choose Show Options to access the palette’s hidden options. Choose Round Cap and Round Join. Finally, set the Stroke to 10 pt. (By default, the corners and ends of Illustrator paths are sharp.) This step gives you a nice rounded look for your tubes.
6. Duplicate the text by selecting the entire text with the Selection tool and then choosing Edit➪Copy➪Edit to Paste in Front.
7. Make the duplicated text lighter and narrower.
In this example, we change the stroke of the duplicated text to white from the Color palette, and the stroke was set to 1 pt from the Stroke palette. The Fill was left set to None. (You can set Fill from the Color palette or the Toolbox.)
8. Select the white text, and with the mouse or your keyboard arrows, move the white text and slightly offset it from the black text.
The two sets of text are ready for a blend.
9. Select both sets of text with the Selection tool.
Click and drag with the Selection tool over all the text.
10. Select the Blend tool from the Toolbox and blend the two sets of text.
To blend the two sets of text, click an endpoint of any letter in the white text. Then click the same endpoint of the same letter in the black text. It may help to zoom way in on the two points by clicking and dragging over them with the Zoom tool. When you’re in the proper position to make the first click with the Blend tool, a little multiply (x) sign appears to the lower right of the tool. When you’re in the proper position for the second click, a little plus (+) sign appears to the lower right of the Blend tool.
The two paths blend together in a series of subtle steps, creating the appearance of a gradient flowing along a path. Totally tubular!

If you don’t get these results, double-click your Blend tool and in the dialog box, choose Specified Steps from the Spacing pop-up menu. Enter (type in) 10 in the Specified Steps field in the Blend Options dialog box, and then click OK.

Converting Type to Paths in Illustrator

The type possibilities in Illustrator are nigh infinite. To make them truly infinite, you need take only one step — convert the type to paths. You gain absolute control over every point of every letter of every word of type.

Edit carefully and spell-check the text before you convert it. After you convert text to a path, you can’t edit it as type. You also can’t highlight it with the Type tool and retype it, change the font, or anything editorial like that.

You may want to make this conversion for the following reasons:
-->To manipulate type like you do any other object in Illustrator: Type stops being type and becomes just another Illustrator path, at which point you can do absolutely anything to it that you can do to other paths.
-->To bypass the need for the font files associated with the type: If you give someone a graphic file containing a type that isn’t installed on the recipient’s computer, the graphic won’t display or print properly if opened in Illustrator or placed into a page-layout program. Converting the type to paths creates a file that displays and prints exactly as you created it, regardless of the fonts installed on the recipient’s computer.

This action is also a good way to make sure that the text can’t be retyped. You should always convert text to paths for any logo that you send to other people, which helps guarantee that the logo will always look how you created it.

To convert type to paths, follow these steps:
1. Use the Selection tool to select the type that you want to convert to a path.
Okay, you’re altering type, so you should be able to do this by using the Type tool — but you can’t. This is just one of those little frustrations that have been around for years in Illustrator.
2. Choose Type➪Create Outlines.
All the points that make up the type suddenly appear, enabling you to edit the Type while you edit any other object in Illustrator. Why the name Create Outlines? Only some long-gone Adobe programmer knows for sure. A better name might be Create Paths from Text, which is what this command really does.

Using Type as a Mask in Illustrator

Illustrator enables you to do a remarkable number of things to your type, but some modifications seem forbidden. For example, if you try to fill type with a gradient, the type just turns black. And what if you want to get really fancy and fill text with another piece of artwork that you create in Illustrator? There’s just no way you can do that!

Or is there?

By using the Clipping Mask feature, you can create the appearance that text is being filled with a gradient, artwork, or anything that you can put the text in front of. And what can’t you put text in front of? Absolutely . . . nothing! (Say it again, y’all. . . .)

A clipping mask is a special feature of Illustrator: It uses the front-most object (called the clipping object) to hide the objects behind it in a unique way. Everything outside the clipping object is hidden, and the fill and the stroke of the clipping object become transparent, enabling you to see whatever’s behind and apparently filling the clipping object. A type mask is what you get when you use type as your clipping object. This may sound strange but will make a lot more sense after you create a type mask of your own.
Creating a type mask is simple. Here’s how:

1. Create the artwork you want to fill your type with.
This can be absolutely anything. The only catch is that it must be bigger than the type that you want to use as fill.
For example, if you want to fill your text with a gradient, you create a rectangle (or any other object provided that it’s larger than your type) and fill it with a gradient, or create the artwork that you want to fill the type with. You can even use a pixel-based image, such as a scanned photograph of your loved one. The only stipulation is that whatever you fill the text with must be larger than the text. Think of the text as a cookie cutter and the object you’re filling the text with as cookie dough. You cut away everything outside the text.
2. Create type in front of whatever you want to fill the text with.
Create your type by using the ordinary Type tool. Using the Character palette, choose a font size large enough so that the type is almost (but not quite) as large as the artwork behind it. If you already created your type, select it with any selection tool and choose Object➪Arrange➪Bring to Front and drag it in front of your object.
3. Use any selection tool to select the text and the object or objects behind the text and then choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Make.
To select multiple objects, just hold down the Shift key while clicking each of them with any selection tool.
After you choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Make, the fill and stroke of the text disappear and are replaced by the contents of whatever is behind the text. Anything outside the area of the text becomes invisible, or masked-out.

With type masks, the text is still ordinary text. You can highlight the text, change the font, type in different words, and so on, while retaining the masking properties.

Any time that you want to make the text stop masking out what’s behind it, select the text and choose Object➪Clipping Mask➪Release.

Flowing Type from Path to Path in Illustrator

Any text that’s within a shape (area type or rectangle type) can be linked to other paths so that the text flows from one path to another. For instance, a story about a pesky fruit fly can start in a path in the shape of a banana and then continue automatically into normal rectangular columns of text. Whenever changes occur in the text within the banana shape, the text in the rectangle moves accordingly.

This process works by selecting the path that currently has text in it along with another path (or paths). You then choose Type➪Blocks➪Link. The text flows from shape to shape in the chronological order that they were created.

If you don’t see any change when you choose Link, your first text box probably doesn’t have enough text in it to overflow into the linked box. Just type more in the first text box, and flowing will prevail. To undo the link, choose Type➪Block➪Unlink.

Adjusting the Path (Not the Type)
After you create path type, area type, wrapped type, or linked blocks of type, you may discover situations in which you want to change only the path and not the type. By default, if you select the path and the type together, you change only the type. So how can you change the path?

The secret to changing the path is to use the Direct Selection tool to select the path and then make your changes to the fill and stroke.

Typing Around a Path in Illustrator

Typing around paths is sort of the opposite of typing within an area; type flows around the outside of a shape (or shapes) rather than within a shape. This technique is referred to as a text wrap or a type wrap. You don’t have a special tool for flowing type around paths, but you do have to choose a command with both the type and the path selected.

To flow text around the outside of a shape, follow these steps:
1. Create a text box by clicking and dragging with the Type tool.
2. Type text into the box until it’s full.
3. Create a path by using any of the Illustrator tools and place the path in front of the text.
You get the best results by using a closed path rather than an open one. You can use as many paths and text boxes as you want. All text wraps around all paths.
4. Choose the regular Selection tool from the Toolbox.
5. Select the text and the path by holding the Shift key while clicking each of them.
6. Choose Type➪Wrap➪Make.
The text flows around the shape.

The most important thing to do when you wrap text around a path is to make sure that the path is in front of the text. Typically, if you try to make text wrap around a path and the procedure doesn’t work, the shape is probably behind the text. If this happens, click the path with the Selection tool and choose Object➪Arrange➪Bring to Front, which moves the object in front of the text. Select the path and the text again and then choose Type➪Wrap➪Make. To undo the wrap, choose Type➪Wrap➪Release.

You can use several shapes for the text to wrap around, or you can add a shape later by selecting the new shape with the Selection tool, along with the existing text and/or shape objects, and choosing Type➪Wrap➪Make.

Typing Inside a Path in Illustrator

An interesting feature in Illustrator is the typographical capability to flow text within any shape. The shape acts as a container for the text, and the text fills the shape — matching it as closely as possible. For example, you can have a listing of the members of the California House of Representatives flow within a shape of the state of California.

To get text to flow within a specific shape, follow these steps:
1. Create a path by using the Pen, Pencil, or any of the basic shapes tools.
This works best with a closed path, but the one shape you shouldn’t flow text into is a rectangle because that’s identical to creating a text box, which defeats the purpose.
2. Select the Area Type tool from the Toolbox.
3. Click the path through which you want type to flow.
4. Start typing.
While you type, text flows within the object.

For best results with text, make sure that you activate (click) Justify All Lines in the Paragraph palette. This feature spreads lines of type evenly to the left and right edges of the path. In addition, use fairly small type because large letters usually can’t fill in the details of the path.

You can adjust the path of area type just as you do any other path by clicking and dragging a point with the Direct Selection tool or by using the Pencil tool to edit the path.