Transcript:
[MUSIC] Hey, guys and welcome to graphic designer. Pro in this video, We’ll show you how to create some awesome Looking custom text in Adobe Illustrator, so download the free template file for this lesson from the description below. And I’ll pass you over to Rowley. Now we’ll take you through the design process. Thanks, Ross. Jumping straight into our template file. Here you can see some of the examples of what we’re going to create in this video. So as you can see, we have a few different types of customized typography here using different types of arrayed lines, so this is very simple to create and over on the right hand side. We have another art board setup with some example. Text here now. This is just some simple outlined text, nothing special going on at all. We would recommend using a heavier font for this tutorial as it’s going to yield better results so jumping into our first example what I need to do. First here is create an array of circles, so I’m just going to grab my ellipse tool from the left hand toolbar. It will be sitting underneath the rectangle tool or the shortcut is L and I’m going to start by creating a small circle on the inside here, sitting just above the text, hold shift and option or Shift + Alt on a PC just to lock this to a perfect circle and I’m going to flip the fill to a stroke in this example, and I’m just going to Center this up against the text so selecting both of them and clicking on the text again, it’s going to make the text the key object and I’m just going to horizontally aligned this selecting the circle we’ve created. I’m just going to create a duplicate by pressing Command C and Command F, or that’s Ctrl C and Ctrl F on a PC, and now I’m going to scale this out from the center again, just holding shift and option and scaling this circle right up. I just want this to be bigger than the overall text. We have here so something like this will do nicely and I’m now going to select both of them and this is where we are going to create our array of circles here, so we can do this by going to object, blend and make, and you can see is only going to add one circle in between here. However, if I go over to my left hand toolbar, we have the blend tool within here. If I double click on this, we get our bland the options up from the drop-down. I’m going to select specified steps. Check my preview. So I can see what it’s looking like, and I’m just going to bump this number up now. This is really personal preference with how dense you want. Your aligns within the text to be so. I’m just going to click OK, And now with my selection tool, I’m going to double Click into this blend, selecting the outer circle here. I’m just going to go to my properties panel. I could equally go up to my control bar up here and I’m just going to bump the stroke weight up. You can see the circles are going from a thicker stroke weight through to the thinner stroke weight that creates quite a nice effect in this example. I’ll go up to about eight point. I think that’s looking good, so Ill. Double click out of the blend now. I’m just going to select it again, so just clicking and dragging over it. And now I want to expand this, so I’m going to go up to object. Expand, click. OK, and we now have our individual circles available to us. They’ve been expanded, but I’m going to expand this one more time so that these are flipped from a stroke path to an outline stroke so they have fills instead so I can do this by doing the exact same process Object Expand. Click, OK, and there we go now. What we’re going to do is use our crop feature now. We just did a video on this recently. So check that out if you haven’t already, and it’s really just the same process that we covered in that video. So the first thing I want to do is make sure that this array of circles is sent to the back, so I can right, Click. Go to our arrange and send to back and lets. Make sure that the text is sitting above. I’ll change the color of this Just so it’s clearer, So what I want to do Next is make a copy of this tech, so all I’m going to do in this example, is just press Command C or control C on a PC, and that’s just going to mean that we have this copied, and now I need to create a compound path out of this text, So that just means that illustrator is going to treat it as a single shape. I can do that by going up to object compound path and make now it’s going to get rid of the fill, but the path lines are still there and what we want to do now is just click and drag over these circles and the text and this is where we can choose our crop option from the Pathfinder menu so it can be found down at the bottom here. If I click this, We now just have our array of circles, appearing where the text was what I can do from here is paste Our copy text back in place or command. F to do that, and you don’t have to do this. This is just if you want to create a stroke around these characters, so I could flip this. Fill to a stroke and bump up the stroke weight and this is basically the effect we’re getting. So this is a really interesting. Look, now we can do this with all sorts of paths as well. So we have some more text down here and to save time. I’ve already set up a few more arrays over on the right hand side, so this first one up at the top is basically the exact same technique here. We’ve created some horizontal lines of varying widths and we’ve created a blend between them, so I’m just going to do the same thing by going up to object and expand Click. Okay, so we have our individual paths now, but I’m going to expand it one more time just to flip this from a stroke to a fill now. I’m just going to hold shift and select the text, so we have them both selected. It’s like the text again by clicking once more and then click the center align horizontally option. I want to bring the text to the front so again. Right, click. Arrange, bring to front. I’ll create a copy of this text, so command C. I’ll convert this to a compound path. The same process applies selecting both the lines and the text will use our crop option and now our lines are only appearing within this text. I can paste our copy text back in place and again. Flip this to an outline stroke here and I’ll just bump the lane weight up, and we can create this quite nice Retro text effect again. We can adjust things like the color is very easily now. One thing that we note in our crop feature video is that when we create this effect, we also create shapes where there is no fill color so. I need to double click into this. I’m just going to select all of these magenta pieces. Go up to my control panel and click the select a similar objects button here. I’m just going to cut them away with command X press command a to select all of the existing shapes and just delete them and then press command F to paste them back in place now. I want to make sure all of these. Magenta shapes are grouped, so I’m just going to press Command G or Ctrl G on a PC, and we can now change the color of all of these at once with ease, so moving on to our last example, we have another array of lines down here now. This is created in the exact same way, But what I’m going to do with These lines is apply a wavy effect to them so again. This is really easy to do. We can go up to the effect menu down to distort and transform and then zigzag from the options. I’m just going to select the smooth option and I think this is looking fine. For this example, you can play around with these parameters to your liking, But I’m just going to go ahead and click OK now. I need to expand this again, so I’m just going to go up to object and expand appearance and that’s basically going to take care of creating paths out of these lines and applying the effect. Now I’m not going to expand this again and I’ll show you why for this example, so I’m just going to select the text as well as these wave lines, click on the text again and center that up, zoom in to this, and this is where again you can play around with the stroke weight of these lanes, so in this example. I might bump this up even just to two-point just to get a slightly nicer fill of color within here again. I’m going to send this array of lines to the back. So right, click. Arrange sent back and now. I’m going to do something slightly different. I’m just going to select both the lines and the text and I’m going to use my shape builder tool to basically remove any of the paths that aren’t overlapping with the text, an easier way to do. This is to change to your outline view, so I can do that by pressing Command + Y or ctrl Y on a PC, and that’s just going to show us the path lines themselves, and it’s just going to take a little bit of the confusion out of it are now going to grab my shape builder tool, which is Shift M on the keyboard or it can be found over on the left hand side and I’m just going to be holding option here or Alt on a PC and clicking and dragging over the paths that I want to delete, so you can see. This is fairly easy to do. On these outer paths, we need to be a little bit more precise in between the characters themselves, but this is still fairly easy to do. You may need to zoom in quite a bit for some of the more precise actions here just to make sure that you’re not deleting any of the lines in and around the character themselves. Okay, So you should be left with something like this. A press command. Why again? We’ll go back to our normal view and what I can do Here is cut this text away so we can see the effect we’re left with so command. X on my keyboard And the difference with the technique we’ve applied here is we still have our paths intact, so as you can see, we get a slightly more natural looking edge with this technique and it can yield some pretty interesting results and we can really do this with any type of a red line so we could do this with straight or angled lines as well or these circles, and it’s going to yield some interesting results, so I’d recommend playing around with this. What I like to do in this kind, of example, is paste my outline text over the top again, so command. F I’m going to flip this to a stroke. Instead of a fill and bump the stroke weight up a touch and then offset this slightly. So just with my keyboard arrows. I’m just going to knock this to the left and above and we get this quite interesting effect with an offset background with this more natural looking edge, so that’s it For these examples of these customized typography using arrayed lines. Hope you have enjoyed this and learned something new, so there you have it. Be sure to try out these techniques for yourself and apply the principles to your own designs and see what you can come up with. If you have any questions, then drop a comment down below and we’ll do our best to help, and if you want to learn more about graphic design, then we’ve created a free one-hour training where we reveal our top 5 secrets to creating beautiful graphic design, so make sure to sign up for the next free webinar. The link is in the description. You’re not gonna want to miss it. I’ll see you there.