See Through Shadow Text (& Shape) Effects in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Intro to Creating a See Through Edge Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley and welcome to this class on creating a gap fill offset Shadow look for type in Adobe Illustrator. In this class, we're going to be looking at creating this text effect in Adobe Illustrator. Now, there are a couple of ways of doing this, as you'll see with these two examples. While the text looks identical in both cases, each is created in a very different way. In this example, the effect is baked into the text. The text isn't editable, you can't change the font, you can't change the word, you can't change the spacing. Basically, you can't change anything if you want any changes, you have to start everything over from the beginning. It's not that this is the wrong way of doing things, it's just that it's not the most efficient way. In this second example, we've got text that looks identical, but it's created very differently. This text is editable. You can change the word, you can change the font, you can change the color, you can change the spacing between the text and the outline effect. You can change practically everything. Overall, it's a smarter way of achieving the exact same result and it takes about the same time to complete. In addition, this effect can be saved so you can reuse it anytime in the future on another piece of text with a single click. Another benefit of this approach is that it can be saved and exported, so you can share it with others. In this class, I'll show you the trick to creating this type of text effect in terms of creating this see through edge for the text, and I'll show you how to save it as a reusable style. You'll learn to make two styles of text and as a bonus, you'll see how it can be applied to shapes as well as text. Your end of class project will be to create one or other of these text effects. If I've been successful in convincing you that it's worth looking at how to create this see through edge effect, then roll up your sleeves, crank up Illustrator, and let's get started. 2. Effect #1 - Offset Shadow: For the first of our text effects we're going to start with a new file. I'm using a document 1920 by ten, 80 pixels in size. I'll click Create. I'm going to click on the Type tool. I'm going to type my word in capital letters. I'm just typing the word coffee, and I can stretch it out by just dragging on the corner handle. If I do it with the Shift key, then the font is going to stay in its correct proportions. You can also select over the type and just type in the size that you want. I'm going to type 350 for this. I'm going to change my font to a font I downloaded from 1001 fonts, and it's called Grolier. I'm going to give you the link in the project area so that you can download that font yourself if you like it. I'm going through the character panel here, I'm just going to enlarge the spacing between the letters so that we have room in this word for our effect to actually appear. And I think I'm going to take it up to about 100 or so. This will be adjustable later on. So we have our type here. At the moment, it doesn't matter what color it is because we're going to start working on it in the appearance panel. So I'm going to the type tool. I'm going to select over my type, and I'm going to the appearance panel. I have it visible here, but you can find it by choosing window and then appearance. Now, for this appearance panel, what we're going to do is in this characters area, we're actually going to turn the fill off. So you're going to make sure that you have no fill at all. And then you're going to click here on type, no appearance, and you should see nothing at all because you don't have an appearance. The type is here, but there's no color. There's no fill, and there's no stroke. Go to click here on Add New fill, and that adds a fill but no stroke. I don't want to stroke, so I'm just leaving that where it is. Now we're going to choose the color that we're going to work on. So this is going to be the color of your type. I'm going to choose this blue color here. Now have our text. I'm going to make a duplicate of it, so I'm going to take this fill here, I'm going to drag and drop it on the plus sign. So we've got a fill on the top and a fill underneath. The fill underneath, I'm going to make a different color just so it's going to be easier for you to see what's going on. You don't have to make it a different color. But you can see that it's blocked out. We can't see it because this fill is on top. Now for this purple fill, the one underneath, we're going to offset it. So I'm going to select it here in the panel. So we're only adjusting this fill, and we're going to effect and then distort and transform, and then we're going to transform. And we're going to move this horizontally and vertically for pixels. And that's going to be our empty space later on. If you want it to be a little bit bigger, you can take it up a bit bigger. Let's make our six. So this is going to be empty. I'm going to click Okay. We made to make a third copy, and the third copy is going to be the actual outline that we're going to see around this font, this sort of offset outline. So I'm going to take this fill, the one that we already transformed, and I'm going to drop it onto the plus sign. So we've got a duplicate of it, but of course, they're both exactly the same. So we're not seeing anything different. But this one I'm going to turn into the color I want for the outline. And in my case, I want it to be exactly the same color as the font. So I want the font to have a sort of offset shadow that is exactly the same color as the font itself. And again, we're not seeing it because it's hidden behind this one here. So what we're going to do is we're going to take this fil, the one at the very back, and we're going to transform it a little bit more. And we've already got our transform here. We're just going to edit it. So I'm going to click on it and that will open it up so we can edit it. So I'm going to take this out to ten. So the first six pixels of this transformation are hidden behind the purple one, we're actually saying four pixels worth out the edge. Of course, you can use your own values there. Now, so far, we've got the effect where we've got sort of stacked colors, a blue and then a purple and then a blue. We want to make this purple transparent. So the way that we're going to do that is a little effect that you can do through the appearance panel. So what we're going to do is go to this purple one, the one that we want to make disappear if you like. Make sure you select it and make sure you click on its opacity, and we're going to set its opacity to 0%. And the effect of that is to make it fully transparent. So, effectively, we can't see it. So all we're seeing is this top layer and this bottom layer of text. But the one in the middle that we want to make see through is not even visible anymore. That's exactly what it should be because there's a feature in Illustrator that allows us to make a knockout if something has an opacity of zero. It has to be zero. So what we're going to do is come down, making sure, of course, that our text is selected and choose this opacity, the one in the characters, the one at the very, very bottom. What we're going to do is we're going to click twice on knockout group. The first time you click it, it gets a little bar through it. The second time you click it, it acts as a knockout. So what it's doing is it's making this fill here, this one transparent. And if we add a filled layer underneath this, you'll see that it is transparent. So let's go and make this a different color. And in the last palette, let's go and drag this rectangle here underneath our text, and you can see that this text is in actual fact transparent. We are saying through this area here that it is effectively hollow. So we're getting this really lovely little shadow effect on our text. The only way we can do that and still maintain full editability of our text is to use this knockout group. And you can see that the text is fully editable. You letters out. You can put letters in. You could change your font, you could change your word. You can change your font size. All of those things can be altered. And this effect is just in one piece of type. So again, in our las palette, we've got the word coffee here, and it's got all these appearances in it, but it is just one piece of type fully editable with this sort of cut out area in it. It's really nice little effect quite simple to achieve once you understand how these knockouts work. 3. Effect #2 - Dotted Edge Effect: For our second type effect, I've already quick started this. So I've got a brand new document, 1920 by 1080. I've just typed the word dots in, and I've set it to 500 points in size. I'm going to change my font, and then in this case, I'm going to use a font called, and then it ends. So this is a lower case font. I'm also going to increase the character spacing just a little bit. Make sure that there's plenty of room for this effect. We're going to do exactly as we did before. So I'm going to open up the appearance panel. We're going to step through this. We're going to the characters panel. We're just clicking on that, and we're going to remove the fill from our text. And then we're going to type no appearance, click on that, and we're going to add our appearances. I'm going to choose the fill color that I'm going to use for my type. So in this case, I'm going to make it a sort of purple type. Going to duplicate this, so I'm going to drag it onto the plus sign here. This is going to be the part of our type effect that's going to be see through. I'm going to set it to a different color just so that we can see where it is. We're going to choose effect to stort and transform and then transform. And again, this time I'm going to move it six pixels horizontally and vertically and click Okay, exactly as we did before. We're going to make a duplicate of this again, going to change the color. I'm going to choose the same color as I'm working on with my type. And this one already has a transform on it because we copied it from before. But because it's behind this one, we're not seeing it. So what I'm going to do is to alter its transform. So I'm going to click on Transform, and I'm going to transform it a bit further so we can see it behind the type. This is all exactly as we did previously. Going to open up the fill panel here and we're going to the opacity, and we're going to set that to zero because we know we need to do that to make it a knockout. And then we're going to come down here to the very bottom opacity, ignore all the other opacities that there are there. We're just going for the one in the characters area, and we're going to click twice on knockout group. So this is an exact duplicate of what we created in the previous video. But what we're going to do now is instead of these lines here, we're going to make them dots. And to make them dots, we're going to need to use a stroke. So I'm going to grab this empty stroke that's sitting up here, and I'm just going to move it just above the fill that is creating this little outside effect. And I'm going to take the transform here from this fill, and I'm going to drag and drop it onto my stroke. So actually borrowing that if you like, or stealing it because it's not coming back again. And I'm going to set my stroke color here to the same color as the type. So effectively, we're saying pretty much as we had before, except that this is a stroke, and it's not an offset fill. This fill we don't need, so we could either turn it off or we can just trash it. So I'm just going to take it down and put it on the trash can just to keep things nice and tidy. So now we're faced with turning this line here into a series of dots. So we're going to click here on the stroke to open the stroke panel. And to make dots, we're going to make them a little bit thicker, so I'm going to set it to three points. I'm going to use this round cap so Id dots around, not sharp edges. I'm going to click on Dashed Line. And right now, this is giving me a 12 point dash line. If you want dashes, then that's exactly what you would do. But I want dots. So I'm going to set my dash length to zero, and then I'm going to set my gap to whatever the space is that I want between my dots. So at the moment, I'm setting it to six points, and that's looking really good. Now, there are a couple of options here that you can use these two here. And what they're going to do is they're going to make these angles in here either very sharp or not. So you can see that this one is not neatly square. But if I click on this, it's going to become nice and square. So you may choose for whatever font you're using as to whether you're okay with it looking a little bit whimsical, or you'd like it to be tighter geometrically. And for this font, although it's a pretty whimsical font, it's also pretty geometric. So I'm going to opt for this option, which is going to give me sharper lines. I'm going to make my dots a bit bigger, and I am going to increase the spacing between them a little bit. Now, as we did previously, we'll probably want to prove to ourselves that this is actually a transparent area and not anything white. So I'm going to click away from my type here. I'm going to set this to nose stroke, and I'm going to set it to a fill color that I'm going to use, and let's just draw out a rectangle. And then from the last panel, we're just going to move the rectangle behind the text. And as you can see, it's definitely a see through effect. Once you've actually created this effect, you can actually save it as a graphic style. So what I'm going to do is click on my text, and I'm going to open up my graphic style panel. You can also get to it by choosing Window and then graphic style, and I'm just going to add it as a graphic style. So the color and the dots. Now, we could reapply that to text, but we can also reapply it to a shape. So before we start, let's just zero things out if you like. I'm going to the appearance panel. Going to click in this little menu here and choose clear appearance. Nothing has an appearance on it right now. So let's go and drag out a small rectangle. As you can see, it does no fill and has no stroke. But I can click here on this graphic style, and that will apply the exact same graphic style to this shape as we have on the text. So graphic styles when you create them, can be applied to text and two shapes. And that's one way of saving yourself from having to set these things up each time afresh. You can just save it as a graphic style and reuse it as you need to