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About this lesson

Once we have a lockup that we are happy with we can take a look at different ways we can arch, bend, or twist our type to make it fit within our design.

Quick reference

Envelope Distortions

Once we have a lockup that we are happy with we can take a look at different ways we can arch, bend, or twist our type to make it fit within our design.

When to use

To create an even greater variety of text effects we can use the Envelope Distort option to bend, twist, and arc our type in Illustrator.

Instructions

  • Begin by opening the Envelope Distortions - Exercise.ai file
  • Start out by going to the Object Menu and choosing 'Unlock All' to ensure that everything in the file is unlocked
  • Select your secondary type and create a copy by dragging a copy upwards while holding the Alt/Option+Shift Keys
  • Click on one of the two copies and go back to the Object Menu before choosing Envelope Distort > Make with Warp
  • Once the Warp Options dialog box appears you will notice that you now have various options for warping your type
  • Check to make sure that the Preview box is checked off and then click on the Style to reveal a dropdown menu 
  • Try out some of the different options such as Arc and move the Bend sliders around to see how it affects your text
  • You can also try out Arc Upper or Arc Lower and notice that you can set the Bend to either a positive or negative value
  • Next we will choose the Rise option with a Bend setting of 16% and a Horizontal Distortion of 26% before applying the changes
  • After applying the warp, notice that there is a blue bounding box around the text that shows you the shape, this is the envelope
  • You can modify the settings further simply by using the toolbar along the top of the interface
  • Once you are happy with the shape of your text and the warp settings, go to the Object Menu and choose 'Expand'
  • When the Expand dialog box appears, make sure that Object and Fill are both checked off and then hit OK

Hints & tips

  • The warp options are a great way to add personality to your text and they can also be applied to regular shapes
  • After applying a warp envelope you can use the Direct Selection Tool to select points and modify or customize the shape even further
  • If at any point you wish to redo your warp all together, go to the Object Menu and choose Envelope Distort > Release

 

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  • 00:04 So now that we've got our blended shapes and extruded texts,
  • 00:07 we're looking pretty good.
  • 00:08 The next thing I wanna show you guys is a couple of more things we can do to
  • 00:12 customize our type.
  • 00:14 And to demonstrate this, I'm going to use my secondary type here.
  • 00:18 So before I go on, I just want to make sure that everything is unlocked by going
  • 00:22 up to object unlock all.
  • 00:23 And then, I'm going to select my secondary type and drag a copy of it up by holding
  • 00:28 down alt option and shift and just dragging that above my original copy here.
  • 00:34 So from here what I want to do is come up to the object menu,
  • 00:37 and we're gonna come down here to envelope distort and choose make with warp.
  • 00:41 Now, there's some cool options in here that will allow you guys to customize
  • 00:46 your type even more.
  • 00:47 You can do things like arch it, that will create this arc as long as you have
  • 00:52 the preview checkbox here selected, you should be
  • 00:55 able to preview all your type options and see how it's affecting your text.
  • 01:00 But you can do a whole bunch of stuff in here to add even more personality and
  • 01:04 make it a little bit more unique.
  • 01:06 I like using arc lower and kind of going to the negative direction,
  • 01:10 usually to create this kind of arch here, but
  • 01:13 you also have the arc upper option where you can go the other way.
  • 01:17 And as you can see, you can go positive or negative values,
  • 01:21 depending on the look that you're going for.
  • 01:25 And you also have the ability to distort it horizontally and vertically.
  • 01:30 So in this case, you could do something like this, or
  • 01:33 you could go maybe with a fisheye or a wave, and
  • 01:38 just check some of these options out, and see which ones you like.
  • 01:41 The fisheye and some of these are a little too exaggerated for what we want for
  • 01:45 this logo.
  • 01:46 But for this project, I'm gonna go with something a little bit more subtle.
  • 01:50 And just experiment with maybe a rise or flag, kind of effect.
  • 01:55 All right, let's see, yeah, I think rise is pretty cool.
  • 01:59 Kind of what I had before.
  • 02:01 Maybe I'll just lower the setting so it's around here.
  • 02:04 So it kind of distorts and makes one side a little bit larger.
  • 02:08 But it also kind of bends it a little bit and
  • 02:10 you can see what's happening here with these blue guides.
  • 02:12 It kind of indicates the general shape of our warp.
  • 02:16 But once you're happy with it, we're just gonna go head and hit OK.
  • 02:20 And from here, you'll be able to see some of your options in this top toolbar.
  • 02:25 Now if at any point you want to come back and reset it.
  • 02:28 All you have to do is come back up to the Object menu and
  • 02:31 choose Envelope Distort and release.
  • 02:34 And now you'll have this gray shape which is basically determining
  • 02:38 the shape that it was using before to transform your text.
  • 02:41 And if you get rid of that, you'll be back to where you started.
  • 02:44 But for now, we're gonna keep that.
  • 02:47 And one other thing that I want to point out here is that, you've got these handles
  • 02:51 here that you can select with your direct selection tool by pressing A.
  • 02:55 And you can actually transform it even more if you wanted to tweak these
  • 03:00 handles and points to refine the shape just a little bit further.
  • 03:05 All right, so there's a lot of possibilities that we can go through year.
  • 03:09 And I definitely encourage you, guys, to check some of these out.
  • 03:12 But once you're happy with your warps type, the next thing that you wanna do
  • 03:16 is come up to the Object's menu and choose Expand, all right.
  • 03:20 And that's basically going to take this whole shape here, check off object and
  • 03:25 fill, hit OK.
  • 03:26 And it's going to do just like it did earlier, it's going to covert everything
  • 03:30 into outlines, and basically into just one big shape.
  • 03:34 So now we've taken a look at some of the ways that you can warp your text using
  • 03:38 the envelope distort feature to add even further customization to our text.

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