Transcript:
They’re the first thing that I want to show you when it comes to. Text and type is text on a point. So the first way that you can start typing is by selecting your type tool over here on the left, and as you can see, there are a couple different options here. We’re not going to go through all of them because this is a beginner’s course, and I don’t want to confuse you, so let’s just start with the good ol. The first one here type tool and entering text on a point means that once you have the text tool selected and you just click anywhere on your document. You can start typing. I’m just going to put some text in here, and as you can see, it just keeps going and going and going along the same path and it’ll even it will even go right off the page. It’s not gonna automatically return or drop to a second line. It’s just gonna keep going, so if you just have a couple of words, not necessarily a whole paragraph or a whole sentence. You can just click and start typing, but let’s say that you want to be able to adjust that text in, like a paragraph form, and you know what? I’m just gonna go ahead and copy and paste a paragraph of text just off a random webpage. OK, So if I click, just do the one click and enter at a point and do my control paste. You can see it just pasted that sentence all the way across, which is not what I want. I want it to look more like a paragraph, so this time with my text tool instead of just clicking and letting go, I’m gonna click up here in the upper left hand corner, and I’m going to a box. Doesn’t matter how big because you can adjust it later, and now I’m gonna paste that copy in there again, control V and now you can see that the text takes form of the box. So if I go to my selection tool, it brings up my box, the bounding box around my text and I can click and drag and it will kind of reformat that text to whatever size box that I make. So if you are typing a big paragraph or a quote and just want to have a little bit more flexibility. You can do it that way. Um, what else text on a path? So let’s say that you want to make a curvy line of text or you want your text to take on a certain shape, so we’re gonna take the pen tool and we’re gonna draw just a curved line. Nothing fancy, we’re not gonna fill it with anything. We just have a line or a path a path that we want our text to follow. So now if I click on my text tool and then I click on the path you can see when I get over the path, my icon, or my little cursor changes to the path, and I’m gonna click on that path and I’m gonna do a control. You can either start typing, or I’m gonna paste in my my text. In this instance, and there now your text will follow your path, so that’s kind of cool and let’s say that we want to. You can also do this. Okay, going back to this top one. This this text is in a square because I clicked and dread a square, but you can, also if you go over to your tools in the left hand side and instead of a rectangle, click and hold down that icon, and then you can get your other options. Let’s try making a circle with the ellipse tool, So I’m gonna go down here and I’m gonna make a circle and then go back to my text tool or my type tool and I’m gonna click inside this circle and you can see my cursor is a box, and that means it’s gonna type inside the circle. So then if I do a paste. Nope, we have to select the circle. I think we have to make it not fill. Go back to our type tool there. We go okay, so we have no fill on our shape and then anywhere inside the circle, you want to hold down, See how when my cursor moves up to the outline of the circle, it changes to a circle that means you’re in the right point or the right spot, so you’re gonna click. And then my cursor moved up to the top. Now, watch what happens when I paste all that text. It takes on the shape of the circle so and you can always adjust that circle to make it big enough for all the text to be in there. And then if you take it a step further, go up to your paragraph options and Center it, it simply just takes on the shape of that circle, so that’s another cool way and then one more option. That’s kind of fun with text is lets. Go back to our text tool and I’m going to type my name and this is just a text on a point. I just made one single. Click, and I’m gonna take my names. Erin Gifford. Let’s make it a little bit bigger, and then if you go up to effect and you have a couple different options here, we’re gonna go down and look at this warp effect, so we’re down to warp and then go over to arc. You could go over to any one of these, but we’ll have access to all of them, so lets. Try an arc so you can see up here and you can, or you can see. It’s giving us a preview already. What it does is, there’s all these different choices here, and it will based on which choice you choose. It will warp your text, so there’s a couple different arced options, and then you can use these little sliders to to adjust your arc either more or less. You can make it on a horizontal plane or on a vertical plane, so those are fun to play around. What, there’s a bunch of different ones. There’s a flag you have to. You can adjust the bend. It gets more or less. There’s a wave fisheye so go ahead and play around with those. Those are fun a fun way fun. An easy way to edit your text hit, okay. Um, and then the last thing. I want to go over with texts or that you will need to know. Is your character window so lets. Pull that up! You can either find it if you have it as a as a shortcut on the right hand side, or you can go under window all the way down to type. And then there’s your character window is right here, so we’re gonna open that up and this character window is where all of your options are as far as formatting your text, so let’s go back to our first paragraph, and if you select that paragraph of text with your arrow tool, you will see, it tells you what font it is. So it’s myriad Pro, which is just my default font. And if you want to change that you can click on the arrow, that’s on the right hand side. Well, it’s thinking, okay, click on the arrow, and then it should bring up all your fonts and what one thing? I love about illustrator. Is that it gives you a font preview as you kind of slide over these, so you can choose a different font, although I’m not going to, I’m just gonna leave it as near yet and then underneath the font. If that font family has different options, semi bold italic, that’s where you’re going to find those as underneath your set. The font size is here and isn’t that cool? How when you hover over one of these? It tells you it tells you what that tool does. So that is very helpful, too. So this first one is yours font size. The second one is, you’re letting which letting means the space between your lines of text. So if we use this arrow and bump it up, you can see my text over here. It’s adding space in between the lines, so you can. That’s very helpful in designing and formatting like Flyers and resumes you can always increase or decrease the amount of space between the lines in order to fill up space or create space so and this. VA option. Right here is your kerning. Which kerning is the end of is the space? I’m turning on extend. May only be set to maybe this isn’t set the kerning between two characters. Oh, this is for individual characters. We’re gonna skip over this because you won’t need that. We’re gonna hop right over here to the tracking. So the tracking is you’ll use a lot because it will give you space in between each individual letters. So I’m gonna zoom in here, so you can really see this with my text selected. I’m gonna add some tracking in between letters and you can see that I’m getting more space in between here. Let’s just select this. Maybe easier to see, and I’m gonna bump it all the way up to like 500 there. You can see that it added a lot of space in between here. Um, let’s put my whole thing. I just selected all my text and I’m gonna put it back to zero. Then the next one is if you want to vertically or horizontally scale your text, so if you have all of your text selected or even if you just click and highlight one word of it, we’re gonna bump this up to 200 and there you can see. It just stretched my text all the way up like 200% so let’s see. I am going to copy tastes. Just a single word over here for these because it’s easier to see when you’re not in a paragraph setting. Okay, so you can scale it vertically or you can scale it horizontally just type in a percentage and there it stretched it out, lets. Put it back to zero there. Um, this next one is to move your type off the baseline and I will tell you I use this quite often, and it’s for one simple thing that I use it for. I have to add a lot of registration marks and TM marks to my designs so the easiest way to do it. Let’s say that this was the name of a company and their company has trademarked. So you want to type your TM after Neath after the company name, and you’re gonna drop that point size down about half the size of the text, but then you want that TM to be raised, so that’s where your baseline shift comes in this. You’re gonna click the up arrow and it’s gonna move it up, just like that, so now you can see. It is exactly five points above the baseline, so that is a helpful tool to have as well and then this is your rotate tool, so if you want to rotate and skew your text by a certain degree, you can do that too. I can’t say that I use that tool very often, so it might be one that you use. It might be not might help stir some creativity, though. So let’s put that back to zero and then these tools down here. I actually use quite a bit as well, but we’re gonna go back to the paragraph, so let’s say you have a couple paragraphs of text and you decide, see. I’m gonna put that all back to 100 there. We go these little tools. Down here will like this first one is all caps. So if I have my whole paragraph selected and I hit the double T. It turns it into all caps instead of having to go back and retype it. It’s just a quick little command, and the second one is, let’s see this will work around all caps, and then so the second one makes small caps. It’ll everything is still in capital letters, but it takes takes the first letter and makes it capital if it was capital before. Excuse me so and this will make everything super script. You know what that would probably work to this? That would be a shortcut for this. If we delete our super script simple, we could highlight just the. TM hit our super script shortcut. And it’ll raise it up for us and the same thing with this next one, it will. If we highlight it highlight our. TM, go to this next tool. That is the subscript. It will put it as a subscript below the baseline, so it’s a nice little shortcut, and then we have automatic underline and strikethrough. So if I have my text selected and I hit the underline, it will underline the text, And if I hit the strikethrough, it will put a line through my text. The rest of the options were not gonna go over because they are a little bit more advanced and in my whole entire 15 years of graphic design experience. I’ve never used anything above and beyond these tools. So one more thing that I wanted to make sure that I showed you. Regarding type and text is another signature illustrator feature, which is creating outlined text so to demonstrate. I am going to select my text tool and I am going to type my name and I see that I have a strikethrough. Let’s go to character and undo that, and then an easy way to enlarge your text while I’m at. It is to click and drag your bounding box. If you hold your Shift key down, it will enlarge it proportionately if you don’t hold your. Shift key down. You can drag it around. However, you want it doesn’t conform it, so you have your text and right now you can still highlight it and [Music] retype, however, you want if you do a ctrl Y and view the outline, its still editable text, meaning, it’s pulling a font file in this case, it’s myriad, it’s pulling that font information from the font file on your computer, and if you were to send this to someone else and they open this illustrator file, they would have to have that font loaded on their computer in order for illustrator to read that font information, so what? I am going to show you is how to convert this to pads and it’s just. If you go up to your type menu, you have to have your text selected. Go up to type and then use this command right towards the middle control. Create outlines shift control. Oh, and now you can see. It’s turned it into paths, which you can move. However, you want, so it makes it editable? It turns it into a picture instead of a font, but once you create outlines, if you go back to your text tool, you can’t highlight and retype, so make sure that you have your text typed exactly how you want it before you create outlines, and now if we look at the the wire outline control or command. Y you can see that it’s all lines and pads and it’s editable in a vector form. So if you were now to save this file and send it to somebody, they could open it up without any font problems at all, it would view similar to like a PDF. They don’t have to have the fonts on their system, But the downfall is its. Not you keep, you know you. Can’t edit the type with the type tool. It’s now an image or a vector drawing versus a font.