Simple, FAST typography distortion in Adobe Illustrator

1. Intro: Hi, my name is Russell amount. I'm a full-time freelance designer. I work in and around London for clients large and small. I've almost 10 years of experience now working on a variety of projects that range anything from brand identity work to custom lettering for big name brands. During this time, I've learned how to work smartly and efficiently to create powerful, striking work. Okay, so where do we start? The Ansoff? Simple, simple, simple. So important, I've said it three times there. But we're going to use Illustrator and only illustrated create the steps. And then it's up to you where you want to take it. We're just going to focus on the technique and the style for now. I think the fewer moving pieces, the better we can create these amazing pieces of work with depth and color and just a few simple steps. Let's get started. 2. RGB colour effect: So I thought I'd start lesson. We'll look in at the very core basics of the RGB color. Prefer, it sounds a bit obvious by thought. Liaise, really look at what we're, what we're trying to emulate and recreate. And in that way, we'll be able to have a more of a solid grounding and a handle on how we can create this instantly iconic look and feel. So here you can see the I've set up the colors. Rgb stands for red, green, blue, obviously. And this is really so simplifying that process and seeing how we can get this effect that you can see on the right-hand side here. So you can see that you can take up the glitch as much into different style. And you can then play around with the opacity on the color. So I've said eases screen because you liked her richer color, which is really, really nice. And then the red, green, and blue layered up on the Y1, you'd want to set it to overlay just if you want to keep that whiteness of the text or wherever main color that you have to say can punch through with a color. So I'm going to show you now, you can pull these up nicely, all light effect. And it's so simple is not about anything crazy or time-consuming. What you're really doing is trying to recreate something that is already quite limited. So I've believed that you should be very simple because that's how you get the closest likeness to what you're trying to achieve. So in this one you can see the clear, which is very subtle. Delays are very close. There's not much of an offset, whereas on this one is much bigger. The overlaps, the curves, the richness of the color. You can really see that because it's some offset on in different labs. So you can see the top one. Not too much the glitch effect, the RGB, but the bottom one, really big marks and that's just from how much you'd like to overlap them. So it's really simple, nice and quick, really simple. And I lead this file in the course page, so you'll be able to terminate it and use this as a chichi. So really pull upon this toe is Vici use. Like I said, I'm painting in the course files. You always have a one-day steps where you can apply it to finish work, any piece of work if you want this effect and it will just level up your work, you can just make it look and polished and slip. So now we've mastered the basics of RGB. Let's move on. 3. Slice glitch effect with the clipping mask: In this lesson, we're going to look at creating something along the lines of what you can see here. We're going to use the clipping tool, clipping mask. And the shadow is quite simple effect, but one that you can level up using these cues or just ever so subtly and still get a nice little touch of this effect. So I've got a blank document open in Illustrator. I've just typed out distort or any type you can use. And I'm probably gonna put this in white just for this demonstration. And then just going to track it out a little bit more. You can see the Kisho cars bottom-left. Say in future, condensed extra boat is an iceberg and stance in our design. You'll find that it probably works best if you use like a thicker font when you're using this effect, because it's got more to chomp power of m. I'm going to draw a blank box over the type. And with that I'm going to create a clipping mask. This is just to control the cuts. Should be one of the cuts that we're doing in the distortion. So you can see here, there is literally just a little letter box of visibility that you can see. I've added text, may diagnosing close and cropped to the type just for management of the file. You don't drive yourself crazy Lightroom. So you can see, just see a little bit here and then OUT to do the next cup AG, just merely copy it down. You can see we're just moving down at visibility to see the next band of type. And then it's just about offsets in it to the left, to the right, wherever you are on a guy. And you can see, is we start to see that distortion. And we just repeat that step again. So, so simple. And we just making sure that we get in there. The next bit for legibility of this bottom band of type. The guy just move it down a little bit. And you can do as many of these cuts as you want. You really can level up for level a town to wherever your needs. You can see just there, just a simple steps. You've already got something that looks like it's being slice through the middle and then down through the bottom. So circuit and you can level up again. Don't be afraid to really level up this distortion effect. You can do it as many times as you want just to get that desired effect. So now we've got all our slices through the texts we can look at in depth, bit of dynamism on, on the outboard. And a good way of gene X is just shearing our type at an angle. Now illustrates got this really cool tool now and the transform tool. And it is just as simple as dragging up the corner, dragging it down. I always like to go from left to right. So think about how someone would read the text before you start sharing and adding a bit of depth. We can see here I've sort of gone for the left to be sort of out towards you and the t to be further away in terms of that depth. And it's just that simple little trick. Just added a bit of speed, the movement throughout the type. And then suddenly you've got just from three or two tools. Being so easy in terms of the effect is so, so good. So it made the slice and dice effect on the world and it's looking really good. We've added the shear effect to add a bit of movement throughout it on the page. And it's simply just revisited the RGB stuff that we looked at in the first lesson and applied it to this. And if suddenly your layer enough, these really quick effects and gain, something really quite deep and effective. That actually doesn't take a lot of time a tool. So let's move on to the next lesson. Now we've cracked this. 4. Warp tool: Lesson number three. So this is a really cool way of distorting type and one that is quite fluid. You use a brush to do it so you can sort of push air out with your fingers if you like, finger-painting. So it's quite a motive in essential, quite connected to the warp is not like a software lead tool. So you can see here this is what we're looking at. This is what we're going to be creating. Something like this is very liquid. Ask if you like. And we've already applied the colors here. And you can see it start to lay it out and it's really, really looking good. So let's get stuck in and see how we do it. Okay, So we've got a blank document here. We've got our future and contents section bold, just because it lends itself very well to this sort of distortion. Again, it's nice and chunky. It's called a better life to it. And I'm doing this one like we saw in the example. We've got three layers of type. Just to add. You can show like the over the top distortion there. And we're going to create outlines. This is just so we can use the warp tool. There we go. So center that up on the Canvas. And we can click on the warp tool here. And you can see when you click on it, you've always got like a brush circle there that you can see. And he is really just as simple as dragging it through, creating the effect. Seeing the effect you want to go for. Having a little play is very reactive. And obviously you cannot do it. And so if I have a plate of one step forward, one step back, two, so see how far you want to take it. You can also edit how impactful you want and the distortion, the warp tool. So you can pick the size of the brush, you can pick the, the intensity of it as well. So just have a play with that and see how reactive as you can see here, when he's up really high, you get a really tight distortion as if you were dragging your finger through this type. To really just have a have a look through pickup, how, how sensitive the tool isn't everything in your Biao to work, how a steady stream of how far you want to take it. And obviously every job is different, so is endless the amount that you can do it. And it's such a nice thing. Like you can see an outline here which is, come on, Why that reduced is beautiful like the way that it just moves the lines. Does it or obviously it's not the best ankle work. But it's the is perfect for distortion because it just creates a really convincing and really distorted but natural wavy look. So let's just copy this art board here. And we go is to play or not. And then, yeah, let's get the colors applied to it. And you can see here that once the colors are applied, again, we're using these really simple tricks and sort of layering them up through the lessons. You can see actually this really simple effect with the colors applied. So much depth and clarity and color, the good Really, really is called SAM just eyedrop in here the colors. And remember that in the project file, she've got the file that we looked at in lesson one with the RGB. And we just said in these the screen, we're getting a white one and set it to overlay that said, and that's just to get that white clarity on top. I like that because it looks a bit like no more than you look a bit more, you interrogate it and you've got all these different colors that you can layer up in. Suddenly you've got something quite impactful. There we go. And that's it. How simple as that, and is so much fun. This is probably the most hands-on 1, which is so good in a sense that you can drag it around and every day my dad yeah, lousy funds or get stuck in. Let's have a look at where I've taken some of these. This was the same type of effect. I've used a white outline here instead of like the white fill. And here is just really simple. Just arched out and then just added in a little touch of distortion. So yeah, I love it. So I see you in the next lesson and we'll move on to the Envelope Distort tool. See you then. 5. Envelope distort tool: In this lesson, we're going to look at Envelope Distort in Adobe Illustrator is such as simple, simple tool. And one that you can really light layer upon, really explore the enroll with different types of shapes. You can see here on the right, I've really pushed it, but even just a simple circle, you can really get this going really quick. Hit the ground running. And I think it's a great little tool to have up your sleeve just in case you need to do something like this really, really quickly. So you can see here, I've got different shapes laid down in a document already sound. Envelope distort lives just in an object. And then down there in envelope distort. So you've got a hexagon and then collection of different shapes there it will come to at the end. So again, we use in a nice chunky font, Futura, dense, extra bold, like the last lesson. And that's just to really fill out these shapes. I just think they really work well. This type of phone. So let's kick it off. Let's go with the circle. And really, all we're doing is layering the circle on top of the type, makes sure there is at the very top that is sat on top. That's what you really want. And just line that up, make sure that's aligned. And then Object Envelope Distort. And then make with top object. And that's all it is. And then it pops up like a bubble, which is fantastic. And then you let it, you can take that apart, copy a layer stopped during the color stuff that we looked at last lesson. Even you can move around that type and that's still live type within that shape that you're saving so much time they're having to outline their edits. If there's an amend from a client or whatever, you can really go out this running. And that's it. That's how simple that is for the inner circle. So that was quite a simple shape. You might think of, but only works for a circle. But you can get in and you can get really interesting shapes like this, hexagon six sides. And then just do the same thing again. Make sure that's on top, on top of the type and its lifetime. You can edit that and then back to envelope distort make with top object. And it really punches out again. Really like your imagination is the limit here. You don't need to worry about, only works in simple shapes. You can get this crazier and crazier, which you see on the next one. And this is fantastic. You can see is I don't know that hard work for you. It really has moved them and again, its lifetime. And you can update that to if a client comes back, they want to change wherever it's being distorted. You can do that in a matter of minutes instead of hours and having to redraw. And again, like a limitless possibilities. And then the best bet, probably the most amazing because it doesn't even have to be the same number of letters within the world. It can be much longer. Obviously you're going to get a much more morphed effect on the larger shape you're trying to move into this tiny or shape. The irradiates is yeah, you can go crazy on it. Really, really go crazy. So let's prove that back to the original letter. And we move on to this more complicated shape, which is moving on. You take in a simple idea and is adenine those different flavors? And this is how you start to layer up the simple tips and tricks. And some of us really interesting. We're following the same steps as before. Up to Object, Envelope Distort top object. And we've just drop this in and you can see here is just popped it in nicely. And then you can use the white arrow tool, the anchor select tool. And then you can start to play around with the handles and the corners. Let's get this really nice morphed waved shape. I've got these shapes on the left. Agents as a starting point gives you an idea of where we're going with there. But you can see you can really do it a free flow in, really get really complicated. And if you were to do this with just straight blocker type and then start doing it microbiome component. You'd like to spend a week just doing this simple bit, which is fine if it's really key to the client with something like a C is really, really good, just as a starting point. Even take it. But then you can give it so much more loved, so much more time from the simple tips and tricks. I mean, don't be afraid. You can always go ahead and you can always go one step back if it's too much for the client or for yourself if you think looking back at it when you review and as far as you can and you can see I've really gone almost looks like a song. Almost like I said, stairs, never you've got like one going down, one coming towards you. You playing with perspective. And how your eyes reading is such an interesting way. And like go for it, I really explore it. And this is definitely not the funniest one. You start with the simple ones, like I was saying before, with the simple shapes. And you can see how you can level them up into something that's far more interesting. And the best bit with this is that even my wreath using different shapes is a bit more complicated. The start game, bit more distorted is still live type. You can go in there, you can retype hair. Obviously, the way that you've just crafted two more, it is going to be different. But that type is still alive, which is fantastic. You can play with CAN in the tracking. All of that stuff's there because it's live like it's such a living element is really as a good tool to be used in. Okay, Now we've cracked this, we can move on to the next lesson. There will be Envelope Distort, but with a mesh instead of a shape. So we can cover that in the next lesson. But you can see here in this next slide that I've really progress this, this is still within Illustrator, but already you're starting to see layers. Depth, use of color, texture in the background is a bit more dynamic. And this is just using those tools that we've used and learn in this lesson. So really get stuck in and share what you've done. 6. Envelope distort mesh tool: Say we covered envelope distort in the last lesson. This is sort of a part to this envelope distort, but with meshes, notice overlays like a coarse grid across your type. And then you can just like go crazy and dragging and morphing into shapes like this. You can really have this wide range of control. You can add in more grid points or less the amount of distortion that you actually want to acquire. Another useful to have the sleeve. Again, we go future condensed, extra bold here. Just again, a nice chunky bear type. They're ready to distort, say are making three. Just because we'll be looking at three different ways that we can apply this, this mesh and would like to store, sorry, that is just the second one down there in Envelope Distort. And here you can pick the amount of grid points that you want, like I was talking about. Here, we became quite a lot, but just play around with how much he won. They start to see in such learned that the more points, the more distorted you can drag into a really care about it. You really have got all these different points or control and you can get quite creative with it. And just to see how far you want to take it. So on the second one down, again, we're going to go through that same process again. With a mesh, we can use fewer grid points here. And you can see I'm using fewer points. You have a little bit less control with a bit more legible. You saw a white lie. How much do you want to be destroying your type was going to be used for if it's going to be used on an ad or a campaign, you probably want some more legible because that's where the crime or one if it's just VA going crazy, then go for it. Do as many points as you want on this third one. Let's see, it's pretty into mesh. And we'll go for a bit fewer. You can have different ones. And it is just playing with these elements. You can go through them, have an idea before you girlfriend is more so of bubbling through a class. And it's just the little touches you have all these different elements to control is another useful, useful to tonight. Another good handy magic trick to have a B slave is that kids you're doing is all within a tool, within Illustrator. You've got ultimate control. You can reset it on A-band grass. Say, we've all been there when we've gone one step too far. But actually, it doesn't matter if we run an errand day is when backspace is. You can just girlfriend, you click Reset, even changed the numbers of grid points. If you want to do some more editing and take a bit more, the next step. So hope you've typed now on, I hope you enjoyed it. And you can see here is another way you can apply our restarts play with colors. You can start to see that actually this idea of the meshes works really well because it's a nice little step forward. You're thinking about it as a bit more structure to it. The more free flowing. And you can see on this next one, again, if you just want to do a big pays, you don't want to put it into like a war power to anything. You can do that manually within this grid without having to outline the texts and the type and style track and OWL into this shape. And I'm worried about the crossbar in the terminals are going to be and what's the bigger vision for the thing? You can do it in such easy, quick, simple steps, then you really are women lie here, your terminal world. All right, so next lesson we're going to look at the incredible 3D tool within Illustrator. And let's jump on CNN. 7. 3D Tools in illustrator: Lucky number six. So this is the final lesson. Now in the course, we're going to look at probably the most exciting tool for me in Illustrator. I think it's only until recently now where laptops and computers have caught up that it weighing lag or delay or get the spinning wheel of death when you're trying to do it. So you can really push it in our really go crazy. They've optimized it and it's like it's open for fine now, which is really, really exciting. So we're going to start in our document, we're going to draw a straight line. We're gonna take a really quick tip here and go to zig zag. And then we're going to pick here, this is a really interesting tool. We're going to go for curved. We can play with the amount of bends and ups and downs in the line and also the height of them as well. So that's another little tool that would be really useful in the future. Then here we just go to Effect 3D, Extrude and Bevel. And that's the biggest part. So here we're going to set our depth. This will be how deep we see it. And then you can even move this around and see the planes and the levels and the depths of the shape that we've just set up. So that's pretty groundbreaking in itself. So you can also use the map, the art here as well, but we'll come back to that. We've got to do a few steps before we get to that point. So let's get some text reading. Let's get a type town. And we're going to create a pattern stamp here. And that sounds a bit intimidating, but it's just really simple. All it is is just create a little swatch that we've got ready to drag and drop that onto the map art function in the 3D tool. So I'm just setting something up here in the front that we've been using throughout. Because again, I think like the Chunqiu, the font, the more distorted you can go focus and legibility. Some sort of alternating pattern here I've got outlying fail just to add a bit of of a dynamic look to it because I think it could look too flat if it's just all of the one thing to hear there, we're just going to go into the symbol palette. My mistake is not baton one, which can a name and get that all set up. It doesn't matter whether it's a graphic or for film. Let's put a in there. I can't say that lives in there now that's ready in the symbol palette. And then that'll be all good to go. When we click on the appearance will this 3D objects now we'll click on the Extrude and Bevel option and then down to map art. And he's a really good bit here you can now pick the sides and the shapes. You'll see a highlighted on the sides. So you just pay attention to what B is highlighting nothing that's probably a winner. Sometimes that is the bottom or the top. Explore what it is, but it will update, you'll be able to see it. So I think that's the bottom one. The thing we're go to the end thing that saying and then if you click on a can't really go wrong, do you? Then you can see on the shape. So that's really good. And then just size up, size up the symbol that you just created. Click OK. And for the shape, the color, you don't really need to worry about it. Could you can do that when you come out. Nice and simple. Sometimes the planes will be fragmented so you can solve mix-and-match like a puzzle just to get the y. How much of a distorted Look you want again, they are just sort of continued on the pattern, right? So let's come outlay. And this is just the line, some from the line that we originally drew the SUV their hands as aligned, so be the outline we're coloring. So I've gone for a color that matches roughly the background. And here I'm just simply seen the best angle, the same, the best layout to use. But I think a color that you can see the depth, the most of that shape, which is kitchen. So let's move on to the next one. Do a few shapes. I've asked a three-day so you can see how they're made. So it's through the same steps as before. This will be a cylinder and applying with the angle here so you can see the real depth of x. I need some, yeah, really your imagination again, age your limit. Here. You'll be out. See, it's a bit more simple in a sense because of the sides is one continuous slides. So you're not flipping through so many. And you'll be able to see again applied if you call it on the right side. So it's not so much with science today. There is this fine day. It's the wrong side. This is the one for every guy and it's just them. Yeah, if it puts it in the one angle, just rotates. It is really just up TA. And it's great because you can see it update live as you're going through them. Again. And again. You can play around with the angle and how it's working. I think it might work better if you do a length wise. Yeah, they can. But like a book, so be flipped IVR. Yeah. Perfect. You can really, really play with that. I think it's great. Here. Let's go for a sphere. This is a little bit different. I'll just cuz you the way you're thinking about it. So imagine this spinning round on an axis. David guy, we're going to go to 3D and then revolve this time just to get that sphere-like is the only one we're going to use the revolve on. Basically anyone that will make the sphere because it's got a spin round. If you were to extend it, you get like a semicircle. And so this is again really simple. We just clicked our symbol that we've already made, and then we've just put it on and in size. And you can start to see it crayfish on, revolve that around the angles is always the same, all exactly the same. So I think the last one more day is, I think as a cube, which is another good one to have the slave much it shrinks. You can see you just lay on in the map and you start to create a scene. They become more than just flat objects you solve, making the make-believe with the depth in the perspective of it all. So let's get this cube set up. We've drawn a square, then we can engage 3D, Extrude and Bevel, set the depth there, which you can see. And then onto map R. And this one you can see you're clicking through the sides. And it will highlight as put that on there. There we go. And then unfortunately is not a scaled to fit one, but it'll be up to you to line up the sides. Save. You'll see in a minute when I put it on the next side, you then sort of half to match their scaling and decide whether you want it to line up, sort of look and feel you're after. But it's great that we've created four shapes in it, not that much amount of time. And it's all within Illustrator. And it's all, again, is editable. If you wanted to edit your symbol that you just put in the symbol palette, then you would just edit. And you'll be able to update these small little changes and it would roll out throughout all those shapes that you've used it on. Which is another really quick, incredible tool in Illustrator, it sounds a bit repetitive, but these are the little tips and tricks, the sort of pick up and learn. Save your bacon I every single day. If you can start to learn and start to work in a practice that is non-destructive within your design work, you'll soon find Europa come in faster and faster and faster. And you'll be able to add more love to what your design in crane, which is I think the ultimate aim for everybody really. So here is a piece of work that I've created using those very same tools that we've looked at in this lesson. It might look a little bit more involved, developed. But don't worry about that because they are the very core tools that we've learned. All I've done is on line blend tool and layered arm using the colors that we learned in the first lesson. And then added some depth with some shading with a feather shape just laid back like is when you start to break it down. Actually, those things that are very complicated are very simple. And we've proved that these simple tips and tricks all add up into these incredible pieces of work. So I hope that you can emulate it, recreates it, and share below how you get on. Thanks for watching this lesson, and I'll see you soon. 8. Wrap up: There we have it. That's the lesson in its complete form. Hyphae loved him. Please share your work with me. Show me what you got to show me what you loved. Tell me what you loved. I mean, let's get a conversation going. You've got the project files now with the RGB colors and how to isolate. We've looked at many different ways to distort type so really highly to share how you go on. And let me nine the bits that you loved amongst. Thank you so much and I hope season for the jaw For now.