In this lesson you're going to learn about outlining text and the two reasons we
want to outline text in Illustrator.
So go ahead and create a new document and I have something I just literally
created in a couple of seconds, so this is not a good example of a logo. It's a little bit
busy but it's just a couple of effects that you can't do in just regular text. We have to
outline it. So that's the first reason you want to outline text is because then we
can add a little bit more effects to it and edit it in many different ways that we
couldn't do if it was still editable text and not a shape.
The second reason why we want to outline text in Illustrator is because if we
send on Illustrator file or an EPS to someone to print out and they don't have
the font that we have, it's going to come up with an error. They're going try to find a
substitute font. It won't work. It's better just to outline it and then it's an
actual shape with points and paths instead of editable text. So to get started just
select the Type tool here and click and let go somewhere. I'm going to type in the same
word, "surf" and choose some kind of font. It doesn't matter really which one it is for this
example. Make it a little bit larger and I just click and drag the edge there and
by the way, if you don't see the edge there, of the little bounding box, if you go to
View, and then Show Bounding Box, it'll show up. So if I don't have that, you can't
resize it, right. Just make sure you go to View and then Show Bounding Box and then
it should be fine. You can resize it on the go
and that should be the default, but just in case. So we have some text here and I want to
change the color to something different so that's pretty easy. So let's just say I sent this file
to someone and it had a really unique font, I'll just go here, Hobo, Standard, Medium.
If they did not have the same font, it would look different.
They would have to find a substitute font so this is why we outline it. But there's
another reason as well. To outline text, all you got to do is right click
somewhere over it and on the MAC you CTRL click it,
and then go to Create Outlines and now I can move it around still with the black
arrow but it does move it around as a group. I can use the white arrow, the
Direct Selection Tool, move around individual letters but when I go back to
the black arrow, it's still going to move it around as a group, if I deselect it and select again until
we go to Object and then Ungroup and now I can even use the black arrow to
really move these letters individually. And so the first benefit is that we can
move these around individually without having to experiment with the kerning or
the tracking and what not. So we can move those around, we can select them and use
the arrows on the keyboard or just click and drag it with the mouse, either way.
So that's a pretty simple benefit. You can also go to the white Direct Selection tool and
just click the edge here and you can really customize the angle with those
handles just like any shape, as if this was a circle or whatever. We can really
move these paths as well and we can move the points on the paths and we can really
customize it. You can also go over the Width tool, you got Warp tool, Twirl tool.
I cover these in a separate lecture but you can really customize this text that you wouldn't be
able to do if it was still editable text.
I going to de-select so nothing is selected and that way it will actually pull in. That's a little
bit strong. See, it's pulling that over so you got to be careful. If you want to resize those
really quick, I just double click on them and we can resize the Width and Height
of those but I do have a separate lecture on that. It's looking kind of groovy.
If you want to go to Twirl tool, this is kind of a useful one I think with the example I was showing earlier
I'm going to do 100 point, kind of the default, click OK and then
make kind of a wave, right.
I'm just doing all these just to show an example. I'm going to overdo it just to show you
other cool things you can do because now it's shapes made up of paths and points. It's not
editable text. If I selected the Type tool and click and drag over it, it's not going to
work. I can click and you know, I'm just creating a new text object, and of course you
can change the colors of these and so on. So this does not look good for our logo.
I'm just showing you the method, right. We want our logos to be a little bit more
subtle, not as busy. But this is why we outline text. So all your type. In an Illustrator file,
we need to right click over it if you're on a PC or CTRL-click it on a MAC, go to Create Outlines
and then it converts it to theese shapes that make them also more editable.
I'll see you in the next lesson.