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About this lesson
After choosing a typeface we can look at some ways to tweak and customize the font to make it fit with our theme.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Custom Type59.8 KB Custom Type
1.2 MB Custom Type
1.2 MB
Quick reference
Custom Type
After choosing a typeface we can look at some ways to tweak and customize the font to make it fit with our theme.
When to use
Once deciding upon a primary and secondary typeface, we can then look at some ways that we can tweak and customize the type to make it fit better within our logo design.
Instructions
- Begin by opening the Custom Type - Exercise.ai file
- Select the 'Bulls' type and make a copy by dragging it downwards while holding the Alt/Option+Shift keys
- With your new copy selected, convert the text to outlines by going to the Type Menu and choosing 'Create Outlines'
- Your text will now be converted into a shape and will no longer be editable
- Switch to your Pen Tool (P) and create a point on the top right edge of the left side of the letter 'U' as shown in the video
- Hold down the Shift Key and create a second point that extends beyond the top left edge of the letter
- Create a third point to create a triangular shape, and then proceed to close the shape and fill it with solid black
- Hold down the Alt/Option keys and drag the black triangle shape over to the top of the second 'L' in the text
- We now have two black triangles on the tops of our letters
- Create a triangle that cuts into the first 'L' using the bottom of the letter as a guide
- Fill this triangle with solid white so that it now appears to be cutting into the first 'L'
- Drag a copy over to your second 'L' so that you have the same shape on both of the letters
- Switch to your Selection Tool (V) and click and drag around all of your outlined type and triangular shapes
- Go to the Window Menu and open the Pathfinder if you don't see it in your panels to the right side of the interface
- With everything still selected, choose the Merge option from the second row of icons in the Pathfinder panel
- This will merge all of our shapes together
- After merging your shapes, grab your Direct Selection Tool (A) and click inside one of the white triangles before deleting it
- Do the same for the second white shape
- Your text should remain the same, except now there won't be any white shapes on top
- You can double check this by adding a rectangle on top of the text that covers it completely, sending it to the back, and making sure that everything is one color
- Zoom in to your merged shape and use your Direct Selection Tool (A) to click and drag around each of the letters and then deleting any extra points that we don't need
- In some cases once you delete a point, you will just need to make sure that the remaining points stay connected
- To do this you will need to click on the last point with your Pen Tool (P) and then close the shape
- Repeat this for the rest of the letters to clean up your lines
Hints & tips
- When merging shapes together in Illustrator it can be helpful to place a new shape in back to see if there are any extra shapes you don't need.
- 00:05 Once you've established your primary and your secondary type phases for
- 00:08 the logo design.
- 00:09 You can begin thinking about a few ways that we can customize them
- 00:12 to make them fit better within our illustration.
- 00:15 So the first thing I'm going to do here is select my primary font with my selection
- 00:20 tool, and I'm just going to create a copy of it.
- 00:23 Once again, by holding down the alt, option, and shift keys and dragging down.
- 00:28 Now, I wanna actually convert this text from live type to outlines and
- 00:32 I can do that one of two ways.
- 00:34 I can either come up to the type menu and chose create outlines, or
- 00:38 I can use the keyboard shortcut, which you can see here is command, shift, and O.
- 00:42 And let's say I've done that, I can no longer modify this type, but
- 00:45 it's okay because we have a copy of it.
- 00:47 But you can see all of the points in here, so that means that this has
- 00:50 now been converted into a shape instead of live type.
- 00:54 So what I wanna do is I'm just gonna close the layers panel for a second so
- 00:58 I can see what I am doing here, and I'm basically gonna add a couple of shapes.
- 01:02 So I'm gonna click on the top and are part of this U here.
- 01:06 Hold down the Shift key, and then click over here to the left.
- 01:11 Now from there I'm going to come down and
- 01:14 basically create kind of a triangle inside of this shape here.
- 01:17 And if I want to, I can press A to get my Direct Selection Tool,
- 01:20 click on this bottom point, and just move it up a little bit and
- 01:24 then I wanna copy this onto one of our Ls over here.
- 01:27 So I'm gonna select it with my regular selection tool,
- 01:30 hold down Alt+Option+Shift and just drag it over.
- 01:34 And I now have that exact same sharp triangle shape on the L as the U.
- 01:41 One other idea here that I wanted to try to customize this is to maybe
- 01:45 Have a similar kind of sharp shape cut into the letters.
- 01:49 So I'm gonna do the same thing, just click on the bottom of this part of the L and
- 01:55 then I'm just going to fill it with white.
- 01:57 And again, if I want to move this point,
- 01:59 I can select it with my direct selection tool and just tap it with the arrows.
- 02:03 And once I'm happy with the shape, I'm going to copy it one more time.
- 02:07 And just drag it over here on to this L.
- 02:10 Now I think that that looks pretty cool.
- 02:12 It's a little bit more interesting than just our plain font up here.
- 02:15 And it gives a little bit more interest and some dynamic shapes.
- 02:20 So what I wanna do now is because these are solid shapes, right,
- 02:24 I wanna combine these with our text and make it one solid shape.
- 02:28 So the way that I can do that is to select this entire group here,
- 02:32 come up to window and get my path finder.
- 02:34 And now I want to choose this option on the bottom row that says merge.
- 02:41 Now once we've done that, it's merging all of the black and
- 02:43 all of the white shapes together.
- 02:45 So we actually wanna get rid of these white shapes because
- 02:48 if I create a rectangle behind the text, send it to the back and
- 02:53 then I'll just sample one of these colors.
- 02:55 Well, you'll be able to see these white boxes still, which I don't want.
- 02:58 So I'm gonna grab my direct selection tool,
- 03:01 click on the middle of this white shape here and just delete it.
- 03:04 Do the same thing on this side because now that it's merged,
- 03:06 we actually don't need that anymore.
- 03:09 And if I zoom in really quickly, I just want to select the top
- 03:12 of this shape here and remove any extraneous points.
- 03:14 You can see that there's a point here that we don't really need because it's just
- 03:18 a straight line.
- 03:19 So I'm just gonna select the point and delete it, and
- 03:22 click on my corner over on the top right and just join that shape together, so
- 03:26 that there's no extra point on top.
- 03:29 Do the same thing with the U over here.
- 03:32 Just click and drag with the selection tool.
- 03:34 Click on that point, press delete, grab your pen,
- 03:37 click on that point over here on the top edge.
- 03:39 And then close the shape on the opposite side.
- 03:45 So we now have our outline text with a few extra shapes that we've added
- 03:49 to use for our logo.
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