Working With Type

Working With Type

Learn how to use the Character and Paragraph Panels in Adobe Illustrator.

When to use

Use the Character and Paragraph Panels along with the Type Tool (T) anytime you want to add text to your document.

Instructions

Working with Text and Text Boxes

• Grab the Type Tool (T) and then click and drag out a box on your artboard.
• Your text box should now be filled with dummy type, also referred to as 'Lorem Ipsum'.
• To select all of the text in your text box, you can click anywhere inside of it and press Command/Ctrl + A to Select All.
  To de-select your text, press Command/Ctrl + Shift + A.
• Open your Character Panel and click in the very first field. This is where you can change the Font Family.
• The second field is where you can change the weight or the style of your font. Examples of this are 'medium' or 'bold'.
• Below that, you can change the point size by selecting a number in the dropdown menu, or by entering any value manually.
• Next to the type size, you can adjust the leading, which is the amount of space between each of the lines of text.
• Select all of your text and increase the leading.
• Below the leading, you have the ability to adjust the tracking, which is the space between all of the characters in a word (or multiple words) at a time.
• Select all of your text and increase the tracking.
• Select all of your text once again, and change it to all caps by clicking on the 'TT' icon in the Character Panel.
• Select the icon next to the 'TT' icon to change your all caps to small caps.
• Try out a few of these other options to create underlined and strikeout text.

Paragraph Alignment

• Select all of the text in your text box by pressing Command/Ctrl + A.
• Open the Paragraph Panel and then click on each of the alignment options beginning with flush left, ragged right.
  After flush left, ragged right, you have centered, flush right, ragged left, and then justified text.
• Try out the next few alignment options that include left-justified, center-justified, and right-justified text.

Hints & tips

• Command/Ctrl + Shift + , or Command/Ctrl + Shift + . to decrease or increase the size of your type.
• Use the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option + the up and down arrows to adjust the leading in your text.
• Use the keyboard shortcut Alt/Option + the left and right arrows to adjust the tracking in your text.
• In order to adjust the kerning, use the Type Tool (T) to click between two letters, and then use Alt/Option + the left and right arrows.
• When adjusting leading, tracking, or kerning, be mindful of the readability and legibility of your type.
• Justifying your text left, centered, or right can create a clean look, but it also creates what are called 'rivers' and these can make longer bodies of text difficult to read.