Type Design Basics: Design a Unique Decorative Grid-based Typeface

1. Introduction & Class Overview: Hey guys, this is Evgeniya from Attitude Creative. I am a graphic designer and photographer based in England. Welcome to my first class on Skillshare on designing decorative typefaces from scratch in Adobe Illustrator. Although my main design background lies in design and visual identities, I really like to do a lot of other things apart from that and playing around with type design is one of those things. For me, this class is an opportunity to push myself to do something which I'm really, passionate about and to share with you a pretty cool and neat technique of designing decorative typefaces. When you think about designing your own typeface from scratch, you might get pretty scared about how much time and effort it might take you to get it right. Don't be scared. You just need to have a set of rules, you need to have some stylistic references, and you need to have a framework to work within, which will provide you with a nice and smooth work-flow for the whole project. In this class, the process I am going to take you through does just that and it allows you to pretty quickly dive into designing your own typeface without too much formula and without too many restrictions. After all, it's decorative typeface, so you can set your own set of rules. You just need to make sure that your typeface looks cool, it is readable enough, and then you're good to go using it in your own design work. We'll start this class with grid development and chooses those images, the grids and building glyphs to define our glyphs geometry. Then we will get into designing glyphs and choosing the right style and developing glyphs based on our grids. After that, we will be finalizing this: choosing final set of glyphs for the typeface, adjusting proportions, cleaning up the paths and defining weights. Then to have more fun and to give our typefaces a different character, we will be experimenting with customizing our typefaces and developing our typefaces further, by adding extra graphic features. Finally, we will be creating typographic compositions and seeing how our typefaces come to life. Whether you are new to graphic design and typography or an established designer, if type design is something that floats your boat, then this class is for you. I have taught a similar project to the first-year graphic design university students and even though it might take some time to complete, depending on your skill level, and how picky you are, it might take you between a few hours and several days. Ultimately, it will pay off big time, when you finish it and have your own typeface to create cool postures, pictured prints, logotypes, or anything else you like making. I'm totally looking forward to seeing you giving this class a go and I will be very excited to see your typefaces and their applications. If you have any questions or need some feedback, make sure to get in touch and post your work in progress. I will be happy to provide feedback and answer any technical, star-related or conceptual questions along the way. Let's make something awesome and learn together. 2. Preparation: Choosing an Image: There are a few different ways to start designing a typeface. In this class we're going to have a look at the grid based on image approach. This is quite a file of process and you leave quite a bit of things here to chance, especially if you're the hesitant type, then it is going to be pretty handy if some of the decisions are going to be made for you. Of course, you will still need to make some yourself, but probably the most difficult part of where to start is pretty set. There are two ways you can approach this project depending on your general skill level; Design Proficiency, and Aesthetic Governance. You can either treat it as a visual experimentation, play it by ear, and see where your design process takes you without having any specific aims, or if you want, you can conceptualize your typephase design process by carefully considering a source image and making sure that the grid and subsequently the type phase carry through the same idea or theme or purpose of application. For example, the typephase I designed for this class is based on the grid built upon the image of a spider, and solids are cautiously in certain iterations, it devolved to be looking like cobwebs, which is pretty handy for making typographic compositions for spider- based phase or anything to do with nature or life in biology. Well, it is your decision to make, but let me just warn you that if you go for conceptual approach, this project will take you much longer than if you just decide to experiment and see where it takes you. For this class, you will need to have that to graphic software such as Adobe Illustrator and a few photographs. You will know that the photograph is right when you're able to see or imagine lines on it. These lines, a variety of vertical, horizontal, and lines of different angles will make the grid upon which you will base your [inaudible] geometry. Your image and hence you grid, can also incorporate curves, circles or semi-circles, which can help to create a pretty nice character that if you are not very confident, using Adobe Illustrator, I would advise you to stick to straight lines now and try more advanced stuff later on. This is always more fun to use your own photographs and for this class, the quality of the photographs of is not actually that important. So you can quickly snap a few shots with your phone camera, or a variety [inaudible] from you archives. Any kind of photograph here can lead to an amazing result. We're talking about lines here, right? So all those choices are architecture and cityscape. So we could as easily get an amazing result from a photograph of pencils scattered around around your desk, tree branches, lines on your palm, or even a photograph of an insect like I used a photograph of a spider. So have fun, get a few photographs ready, and watch the next video where I'm going to show you what you need to do to develop a usable grid in Adobe Illustrator. 3. Building an Image-based Grid: Now, it's time to build our grids. I'm going to go through my process quite thoroughly so anyone who is not very proficient at using Adobe Illustrator can follow it and understand what I'm doing. But I will also try to make this quick as possible, so any of you design pros out there, don't get too bored. In Adobe Illustrator, I'm going to create a new file and straightaway, I'm going to give it a name. Then I'm going to go to Profile and select Print because I want to have A4 format for my art board so everything is nice and big. Then I'm going to go to the advanced settings down there and change the Color Mode to RGB because I'm not going to print any of the work in this file. Give the Raster Effects to High 300 ppi. Then most importantly here make sure that Align New Objects to Pixel Grid is turned off otherwise, it might really screw up everything you are making in this trajectory actual total control over everything [inaudible] where you put it and keeping the correct change. I'm going to keep portrait Artboard Orientation, as there is a more vertical normally, but actually it doesn't really matter. I'm also going to set my units to Points as this is what I like using and I advise you to use either Picas or Points because it is a typeface, after all, do not use milimeters and definitely not centimeters or inches as they're way too big. I'm clicking Okay and here we are. First thing I'm going to do is my new file is go and save it. I'm actually a bit of to save file freak myself, and Command S is my most commonly pressed keys. But if that saves me a lot of time and nerves over the years because saving the file open as the best insurance from losing anything. I advise you to do the same. Now, I'm going to put my ai file in the folder which I have already created for this project. If you do not have one, it's time to make one. Organizing files and naming them correctly really saves a lot of time and makes your workflow so much smoother. Click Save, and let's go. Now, we need to add the image, we're going to be basing our grid upon. There are a few different methods of how to insert a raster image into the Illustrator file and the most common one is Place. But I will show you a full proof method instead, because if you use Place file it becomes a link and refers to the actual file elsewhere on your hard drive. If you move it or rename it, you only need to locate it again to be able to use it in Illustrator. What I will do instead is I'm going to open my photograph in Illustrator. Here's my spider, and now I will just select it with the Selection Tool and copy it Command C or Control instead of Command, if you're using Windows, then I'll go back to my empty file and paste it into a [inaudible]. This way the photograph is actually inside of the Illustrator document, and not [inaudible]. This method increases the file size because of the additional data. But as I said before, it is full proof, so you will improve your photograph even if you dispose, move or name your original image file. Now, we can close the top of the original photograph and keep on working in the file, we're meant to be working in. Now, I'll go to the Layers Panel if it is not open, then go to Window, Layers and activate it. I'm going to rename this layer with a photograph. Then I'm going to lock the layer, so I do not move or do anything else with it. I like keeping my reference images on a separate layer because it is easier to access, turn the visibility on and off, rather than looking for the static objects within a layer with actual project graphics in it. Then I need to create a new layer to work on and rename it so I can easily navigate through my file. Now, I will save the file again and I'm good to file and start working on my grid. Make sure that the layer you want to work on a selected visible and not locked. Then I select the Pen Tool, or just press P. This is the tool which I will be using to build my grid and basically make pretty much everything in this project. Then tool allows to draw precise straight lines and curves, and is the main design tool in Illustrator so you better get the hang of it. I'm going to Zoom in quite close to the area where about to work. Now, I just need to set up my Pen Tool with the color which is going to be visible on top of my photograph. At the bottom of the tools now, I'm going to Swap around Fill and Stroke colors as I will be working with lines, I do not need Fill color, which actually feels the area, so I'll set this color to None. Now, I will double-click on the Stroke color, and in the Color Picker window, I'm going to select some bright color which will contrast with my picture. Now, before I start to draw, I also need to set the Stroke Weight here and I'm going to keep it for one points so I can actually see everything clearly. I can always make larger or heavy if I want to. If you're going to draw straight lines with the Pen Tool like I'm going to do in this class, then make sure that when you click to start the segment and when you click to end it, you just click and release straight away. If you hold down the mouse button and move your mouse, you will create a curve instead. If you do it by mistake, then there is this handy button here, which you can press to convert your anchor point to angle, but you need to select your anchor point with the direct selection tool first. Unlike the Selection Tool, which is used to select objects from their groups, direct selection tool is used to select points and paths inside of the object so you can modify the shape. Now, with the Pen Tool, I'm going to follow some lines which I can see in the picture. Also, if you find something almost horizontal or almost vertical, it is a good idea to make it that way. When you want to draw, a segment, we should follow vertical, horizontal or 45 degrees axis, make sure to hold on Shift key, when you press your mouse key at the end of your segment. This to all the lines on an angle, make sure that there is a good range of different angles. From my personal experience, it is [inaudible] which can actually make operate a grid, and you want it to be usable and versatile. Now, I seem to have enough lines here so I can actually start scaling them so they feel my art board and form my grid. To do that, I'm going to use a Selection Tool, although there is a Free Transform Tool in Illustrator, I do not actually use it because you can do everything using the Selection Tool with a visible Bounding Box, anyway. Make sure that the Bounding Box is shown, if not, go to View, Show Bounding Box. Now, select a segment, hold down Shift and Alt keys. Which will allow you to scale proportionally in relation to the center point of your segment and drag a corner of your Bounding Box far enough to make the segment go across your art board. At this point, your stroke also might get heavy, and this is because in the Transform options you have Scale, Strokes, and Effects on, so turn it off and change the way back to what it was supposed to be. These option of Scale and Strokes and Effects is actually really useful, but not in this case. Now as I scaled all my segments and adjusted their position where I felt it was necessary, I'm going to select them all by pressing Command A, Control A in Windows and then I'm going to group them, Command G. This is the first building block on my grid ready. I believe that some beliefs have a certain degree of symmetry so I need to make sure that my grid is symmetrical both vertically and horizontally. When doing that, I'm also going to increase the number of lines in my grid, which will also allow for more grid geometry variations. Having my group selected, I'm going to go to Object, Transform, Reflect, choose to reflect vertically and click Copy, not Okay because I actually need a second copy. Now, I have my second group which is reflected and holding down Shift key to keep it in line with the original grid, I'm going to move it horizontally until I reach a point where I can actually start seeing some nice shapes which I can use in my beliefs design. Now, I like it this way because I can imagine elements like a top part of letter A here or maybe C here so I have something to work with. Now, I need to reflect it once again, now horizontally, so I have a fully symmetrical grid. I do it again, select Horizontal Axis and click Copy. Again, I need to move it into place hold on, Shift and here we are. That's good I have the basis of my grid ready. I'm going to group it altogether and I'm going to keep a copy of the grid as it is. Although I also need to have some usable guides in future. I'm going to copy this layer, pull up and hide the original one and rename this one so I know what it is. Now, to make guides I need to select my group and group it, Command Shift G, a few times until I do not have anymore groups on this layer. Then I will just right click here and select Make Guides, and here we are. This is it in terms of what I need for my original photographs so now I can turn the visibility of and get ready to add some more guides to determine my typeface anatomy, which I'm going to cover in the next video. 4. Considering Type Anatomy: Well, my grid is almost ready. There is one more thing which I want to do before I start designing my glyphs. Because I actually want to have a typeface with consistent length and height and proportions, and guides which will define basic structure is my next step. Any typeface has a number of horizontal lines in its structure. These lines are, a baseline, an imaginary line upon which letters appear to sit, a camp line an imaginary line at the top of most uppercase letters, a mid-line, an imaginary line that trust on top of the body of the lowercase letters not including ascenders, a center line, an imaginary line which marks the height of the ascenders in the lowercase letters such as b, d, f, h, and k, and the descender line and imaginary line which marks the lowest point of the descenders in the lowercase letters such as g, j, p, q, and y. Although you might not be able or even need to define this line straight away, might be a good idea to keep their purpose in mind and when you start designing your glyphs after a few trials with different letters, side on the rule which you want to follow. Looking at my grid I can already picture where my glyphs will be built. I have also decided that I am going to design a typeface consistent only of uppercase letters, so I do not need to worry about anything to do with the lowercase ones. On a new layer using a Pen tool and hold down Shift to make my line horizontal, I will just draw a line here. This is going to be my baseline and I'm going to copy it to make it top line here. Also I have some idea about general symmetry of my leather forms, so I'm going to add a vertical axis here just to keep myself on track. I will also save this line to be dashed. I will be adding a mid line later on to accommodate quotation marks, but either it will be only after I designed all the letters. But you know what, if you are planning to design a totally wild typeface, you might just keep this part all together. Now my grid is totally ready to be used and under view. In my next video am quickly going to take you through how to prepare a good template print to be able to sketch your glyph by hand on paper. Though myself, I find it much quicker and easier to design glyphs in Illustrators or straight away, I know that some people find it easier to think and sketch on paper first. If you're one of those, then watch the next video and if not, move on to the next part about designing glyphs. 5. Creating a Grid Template for Print (Optional): This is a quick demonstration of how to create a grid template from print and sketching by hand, and this part of the project is optional. Before creating a print template, make sure that your file is saved and then copy and rename it, then open your new file. Then, to save space, delete layers with guys that original image. Now make your grid lay visible and unlock. Then change color of the grid, above 40 percent blend works fine, it's not too obtrusive but you can also clearly see the grid to draw on. But any way, before printing a whole bash, do a test for it to make sure that your printer prints as well and you can see it. Then, change the weight of all once to not point 25 of a point. Depending on your printer, you might also want to make it heavier so test print first. Select your grid and your type guides if you have them and group together. Then, using shift through, draw a vertical rectangle or a square to curve the area where you want to design your grids. Align your group and your rectangle to each other, and then having a group in the rectangle selected, right click on them and choose create clipping mask. Now, you only have the part of the grid reach unit, make it a bit easier to work with. On the tools panel, select Art-board tool and make your Art-board horizontal by clicking here. In transform options here, make sure the scale is strong and attacks is turned off, and then using selection tool and holding down Shift key, here you are clipping with down so that you can feed four or five of them in a row for a floor format. Copy your clipping group three or four times, so you have enough templates in a row, then select them all with the selection tool, and then in the align panel, if it does not open, go to Window align. Make sure that the line under selection is picked, and then align your clipping groups to each other, and distributed horizontally, so that the gap is the same. Then, group them all together, an, d copy once so you have your second row, align both rows, and then group them. Then, it change the setting to align to Art-board, and align your group to vertical and horizontal center. If the group is too big or too small, resize it holding down Shift key so it covers your Art-board nicely. When you're ready, click Save and then also save your file for print as PDF. Though these files are identical and you can do the same things with them in illustrator, I prefer to keep a separate developmental and a separate Print File. Print as many copies as you need using Adobe acrobat Review or any other program like that. Now, you're set to sketchy way, so watch the next video where I will share tips and tricks of designing grids and choosing between different types styles. 6. Designing Typeface Using The Grid: Here, the exciting part starts. Approach the step with an open mind, and playfulness, and do not overthink what you are doing. This way, you will be able to have more fun, and make everything much faster. You'll control freak inside of you, and start looking, and see. I keep on seeing glyph all the time, but what does it actually mean? Glyph is any character in a typeface, and you can have more than one glyph for each character, and those are called alternates. For my typeface, I want to concentrate on uppercase letters, numbers and some punctuation marks. That is enough for me for now. You only to decide for yourself what you want to design, but I suggest you make a similar set. I find design in uppercase letters a bit less tricky. That's why I want to concentrate on them, but make up your own mind. At this stage, you need to look at your grid, and try out a few different letters in different style. The easiest and the most let's say, normal approach here would be to make a linear typeface like mine, based on the lines on the grid, because it allows to have a uniform stroke weight, which makes it look light, and reasonably balanced. The other approach requires you to look for shapes within your grid, which can form the glimpse. This might be a bit trickier, but also could allow you to get a very different character. If you'd like to try out an approach which can lead to a more Illustrated type, then this is a right way to go. With this approach, you can go for either a field in style, or for outright, depending on how heavy you want your typeface to appear. But it also straight away provides you with two different variations of the typeface, which can be very handy. Also, the overall shape of letters doesn't necessarily need to fit in a rectangle. It can be any other shape, like a hexagon, or any other polygonal shape, or even a circle, so you will have to look at your grid, and decide what character you want your typeface to have. While designing your letter forms. Keep in mind that different letters can have different widths. Letters M and W will be wider than most, and letters I and J, will be narrower. Unless of course, you go for a monospaced, or fixed width type face,or all letters occupy the same amount of result of space. Remember, I have created guides out of my grid. This is where they come into play. I am going to check the smart guides, our own, so, views smart guides. Smart guides is one of the most awesome and useful features in illustrator. This magento hints allow to line objects to each other, distribute them equally, and all without going to any other panels. They are also very handy when designing different shapes. In the case of this class, this is what makes it so easy to follow the grid with the pencil. All I need to do, is to click in the right places. Because my typeface is based on lines, I am going to create a number of segments, and I will worry about connecting, or disconnecting them, or unnecessary later. Every time I want to start a new segment I'm pressing "Command shift E" which deselects the previous path I worked on. If you're designing a shape in this typeface, then make sure you close each of your paths. To do that, you need to go all around each of the shapes, and at the end, close the path by clicking on the starting angle point. You will see a circle next to your pencil, which will lead to closing the path. Do it this way, and then you won't have any issues later. If you need to build an enclosed shape with a hole inside, or to put it in the design linger, and negative space, which in typography is called a counter. Then, first draw your outer shape. Then draw the shape of your counter, which is actually called a bowl. Then, select them both with the selection tool, go to the pathfinder panel, if it's not there, go to window pathfinder, and there, in the shape mode, click minus four. Now it is one nice and neat shape. Working on glyphs, I like to have a separate layer for each of them, so that I can easily go between them. I also have only one grid and design in the same space, and have only one glyph layer visible at a time. Keeping my glyphs in the same place allows me to quickly duplicate a layer, if I want to try out the alternative design for a glyph, as well as making the process faster by copying elements which repeat in different letters. For example, the basis for my letters C, E, G, O, Q, S, and numbers zero, six, and nine is the same, I do not need to draw it separately every time, which saves me a considerable amount of time and makes a typeface more consistent. Start going through your alphabet, but not necessarily in alphabetical order. I actually find it quite useful to design a few letters which can form a short word first, and then group each letter, and copy them all onto a different layer, and put together a word to see how my typeface works. This way, I can check out the consistency of the style, readability, and generally check whether the mood of the typeface, is what I want. With certain letters, you might find it tricky to build them in the same place where you built most of the alphabet. For me, the most difficult letters turned out to be K and M, so, I actually have move around the grid to find a good place, and appropriate grid lines for them. In some lines I build in one place, and then move the letter back to the center to build the rest of it. Even then, with these two letters and a few more of the glyphs, I actually had to draw lines, which were not in my original grid, just to make them look well balanced, and follow the same style as my other letters. Do not be afraid to break the grid a bit if you must, but check out all of the options in your grid first. If for some reason you cannot build anything you like with your grid, then look how you can adjust it, and add more lines, or remove some if they are too many. If that doesn't help, get a different photograph, and fill a new, and don't give up. Remember what I said before, make sure you have a good range of different angles, then your grid will work just fine. Don't get too worked up, and stuck if some glyphs do not work straight away, just move onto the next one, and revisit the tough ones, when all the easy ones are done. When you have designed all the glyphs, move onto the cleaning up, and finalizing stage, which I am going to go through in the next part. 7. Choosing Final Set of Glyphs: When you complete the design development stage, you'll probably end up with the file a little bit like mine and we were able to players here and the alternative designs for some glyphs. At this point, I would like to leave this file alone and duplicate it so you can get all those finalized in a different file. I always like to keep separate files for different stages, as it makes it much easier to go back if I need to reduce something. So in my new file, I'm going to go through all the layers and decide what I want to keep and use and what I want to delete. I don't need my reference image any longer and I don't need an original layer of my grid, but I will keep the grid guys and type guys because I still might need them. I'm also deleting my layers on which I tried out how the alphabet works together and how some words Look. At this stage, I'm going to group each layer or make sure that they are already grouped so that I don't lose any elements when I move them. I will also name each group according to what it is, so I can easily find them. Then I'm going to go through all my glyphs and put them on two different layers. One layer for the alphabet, for definite inclusion in the type phase, one layer for final digits, one for quotation marks and one layer for any potential alternates. You might want to cut the few coolers at this point and just drag the layers onto the new ones, but if you do it, it is not going to treat them as groups, but rather still as individual elements. So you still need to group them separately. Make sure that you delete all your empty layers so that you only have a neat list of what you need. To quickly arrange all my final letter forms in online, I'm going to select them all and on the align panel, select Align to Key Object somewhere here 30 points will do for now and then click horizontal distribute space. Well, it doesn't work in alphabetical order, but rather on the order of what those closer to the Latin side. But anyway, now they're all in their old place and I can see them all separately. So now, I can mainly rearrange them alphabetically holding down shift graph then drag each of them sideways so that they keep in line. Now, they are in alphabetical order and I just want to have uniform spaces between them. So I go again to the align panel, select Aligned to Key Object and distributes space horizontally. My primary choice of glyph is here. Now I will draw the same as all other layers. As to the alternates, I'm not going to put too much effort into alignment. I just want to see them all next to the corresponding primary glyphs. Now I can decide whether I want to keep any alteration and actually I don't have this particular mountain, so I will just delete this layer and move onto clean it up my glyphs. In the next video, I will share some tips, what to look out for when finalizing the shapes. 8. Cleaning Up the Paths: Now, I'm in a position to clean up all my paths. The first thing to do is to make sure that all elements are visible and unlocked and then go to "Select," "Object", "Stray Points." This will select all of these useless points which were created in the process of clicking around and not removing paths all through. Well, we all do this sometimes. Stray points are annoying because you cannot see them, but they could prevent you from doing some things such as connecting two endpoints, so get rid of them. Now, this might take some time, but perfection begs for it. Zoom in quite close, and go through all the gleasemae one by one, making sure that everything is perfect and nothing is sticking out. If your type face is made of shapes rather than lines, then just make sure that all your paths are closed. If you're unsure about something, then right-click on it and select "Join." This will connect your two endpoints. With the linear typefaces, there are a few things to watch out for. One, is this area where one path meets another so you need to make sure that the endpoint of one path is touching another one, but not going over it. Select the endpoint with the direct selection tool and move until it touches the other path perfectly. Martin guys, we'll help you here. To be even more precise you can go to the "Outline" mode, "Command Y" or "Control Y" in Windows, and then adjust it there. But because you can not actually see how it will look in the normal design for view mode, it is a good idea to turn the outline mode off again "Command Y," check it out. Though there might be a few problems if you have different stroke settings, generally this should work fine this way. If not then play around with the stroke setting still it is all okay. Next thing is to check out all the corners. If you have just two line segments forming a corner, then make sure that the endpoints are joined. You will see if they are not and then with the direct selection tool, select the points which you want to connect and then click "Connect selected endpoints" here. If this button is not active, it means that you are selecting more or less than two points. If you have more than two line segments meeting in the same point like here, then you need to make sure that your corner is made out of the two lines which form the wider angle. With the direct selection tool, select all the points and disconnect them by clicking "Cut path at selected anchor point". Then select and move out the end point of the segment, that you don't need to connect. Then select and connect two points, which should form an angle and move back the endpoint of the other separate line segment. If you have some corners touching paths like I've got here, you might have the same issue so select the corner and then click "Cut path at selected anchor point". Now its fine. Well, this is basic issues which you might encounter, but make sure to check everything out in case there are any other problems. When you already go onto the next video in which I will cover how to make the typeface more balanced. 9. Adjusting Proportions: Next thing to do is to look at your typeface and analyze whether it is nicely balanced if needed to be sold. In my case, because of the way I used the grid, I can straight away see that some letters appears more than the rest. This is actually a common issue with rounded or pointed letters in any typeface because of their geometry. That is why they normally have overshoots. In this case, meaning that they extend higher than the comparably sized flat letters like X or H to achieve an optical effect of being the same size. Because of this particular shape of my letters, it is actually quite easy to see what size they should be to look balance together with the rest of the alphabet. So, I'm going to have a look at how much I need to adjust them by, and add two more guides above the cap line and below the baseline. Now making sure that yet again, scale, stroke and effects is off. With the selection tool and holding down "shift" and "alt" keys, I'm going to resize my letters which need attention one-by-one to their new size. I'm also going to do the same with my digit 0, 2, 3, 6, 8, and 9 and to the top of my exclamation mark. Now I have a clean and balanced typeface and they can move on to finalize the waves, which I will cover in my next video. 10. Defining Weights: Having cleaned up a neat typeface here, now I can start working out what weights I want to have. Yet again, I prefer to save and keep this file as it is and duplicate it to develop the typeface further. I could do it all in the same file but on different layers but because there are way too many lines here, I would rather have a separate file for it so Illustrator works faster. With linear typefaces like mine or with the outline typefaces, when you're happy with your original font-weight, now it's time to trade outlines. So select everything with the selection tool and go to "Object", "Path", "Outline", "Stroke. " Now all of these are shapes with the field color and not strokes. If you have a shape-based typeface now you can join in as the rest is the same for everyone. Selecting one letter at the time with the selection tool, go to Pathfinder panel and in shape modes click "Unite." Then go to Menu, Object, Compound path, Make or click command eight, control eight in Windows. This way your group of overlapping or separate shapes becomes one. Now you need to go through your whole typeface and do the same with every clip, and then rename each of them so you can easily find them on the layers panel. Now you can create a few different ways if you want to. For these I suggest to put on one layer all the clips from the typeface then duplicate the layer, lock and hide the original one. Then select the second one, zoom in close enough to see your changes in detail and go and play around with the stroke setting. Not just the Width Weight but also Caps and Corners options and Stroke alignment so you can get the different look. At this point it is also a good idea to hide edges and bounding boxes so you can only see your typeface. Just remember to turn them back on afterwards. When you're happy with the look then you can outline strokes again, Object, Path, Outline, Stroke, and then go through the same process of uniting to this pathfinder and creating compound paths out of each clip. This way, if you want to create a working typeface out of it in future you're pretty much all set. When you're happy and ready to progress, watch my next video in which I will share with you a few simple tricks of hidden extra graphic features to make your typeface stand out even more. 11. Adding a Different Look to Your Typeface: Though your typeface is already unique, there are a lot of different ways you can take it to a whole new level. In this part, I am going to cover a few quick tricks which can help you to stylize your typeface in a new way. Make sure that you don't destroy your original typeface and it's different weights, so either duplicate this file or duplicate the layers. Myself at this point, I would prefer to keep everything in one file and just move different styles in different places, so I can easily compare them and see them all altogether. First and most basic thing to play around with would be stroke options. This is a continuation of what we did whilst working on the ways and in this part, I want to highlight the possibilities of each corner options bring us. Round and developed joins can create nice to change of whole mood of your typeface. I actually really like to experiment with a stroke settings a lot, and over the year, I found a few cool tricks which can make customizing typefaces really nice and easy. For this class, I just want you to keep in mind and try out some very simple things. For example, if you duplicate your layer and lock it and then work with the new one, you can achieve this effect. To do this, all you need to do is to set your stroke way to the same as you type. If it is linear, if not, there are a lot of options. Ensure that field color is the same, then align your stroke to outside, then outline stroke. This will create two shapes, one for the field and one for the stroke. So you will need to unite them, and set the field color to none and set your stroke to the color of your type. Set its weight again and align to outside. Now you have a new look and you can repeat it as many times as you want to have even more lines. This brings us nicely to all-plain and filled-in option. If you typeface is shape-based, now it's time to make an alternative version. So if you have a filled-in type, you can make an outline and vice versa. You can also play around with the stroke settings the same way I just showed you. So you can have triple outlines for example or just an off-set outlined on a field type. This part is probably my favorite, because round corners give us so many different design opportunities. There are two ways you can work with the round corners in Illustrator. [inaudible] or you need to select your corners with the direct selection tool and adjust it manually to achieve desired effect, which is really poor and flexible, but takes a bit of time, especially for the whole typeface. There is another automatic option which whilst being a bit more limited, is really quick. Select your typeface with the selection tool and then go to Effect, Stylize Round Corners. Make sure that preview is turned on and play around with different settings until you like the look. Also because it is an effect, you can modify it afterwards if you go to Appearance panel, if it's not open, go to Window appearance. Here, double-click on round corners and adjustment it. Here you can also talk of the visibility of the effect and delete it if you want. For this effect in combination of different strokes, settings, and multiple layers, you can get a lot of really awesome looks. So play around with it and work it out for yourself. When you're done and happy, click Expand Appearance and this will apply your effect prof for your shapes, so it will became a compound path. After expanding, you cannot edit effect in Appearance panel any longer, so only do it when you're totally finished. This technique will only work with certain typeface styles, nevertheless, it is good to keep in mind. Select the Live Paint Bucket tool, the tool turn on, and click on any of the shapes to fill them with a color. It can be negative space as well, which is why I like it and that's the way I used it. When you are done painting, expand appearance, so that you can work with the individual shapes using path finder and other tool. If you are an illustrator who just would like to add some illustrative place holders to a typeface, then consider drawing some elements which can add a different character to your typeface. It can be anything you want. You can make it hairy, you can make leaves grow on it, you can make it wear hats, or have mustaches, whatever you want, it's up to your imagination. I really would love to see customization like this from you, so please surprise me. You can also combine all these approaches together and see where it takes you, or if you find your own cool way of customizing your type, please share, I will be very excited to see it. When you have finished customizing your typeface, make sure to outline strokes, unite your paths, and make compound paths just like we have done in the previous video for the weights. Then, you're all set to start making some cool design outcomes with your own typeface. In my final video, I am going to go through a few things, which can help your typographic composition stand out. 12. Tips and Tricks for Creating Better Typographic Compositions: If you go that far you probably know what you're doing by now, but I still want to share a few things with you which can help you out when you design your typographic compositions. You're going to be arranging Type menu to here you need to keep in mind a few things which will make your life easier. Remember how we arranged our alphabets before? Well here when you put together all the letters for your words you can do the same. Align your letters to each other vertically the way it works you type, mine it is aligned at the center, and then select Align to keep object, set you desired gap size, and distribute spaces horizontally. Now in essence it is the space in between successions of characters which in typography is called tracking so I will refer to it this way. After distributing spaces we can see that there are some gaps which appear larger, and to compensate for it optcillary we need to manually adjust the spaces between pairs of letters until the text looks evenly spaced. This is called kerning and in comparison to tracking it refers to the horizontal space only between individual pairs of letters. After tracking and manually kerning individual words Move them separately and adjust the gaps between them using Distribute Space function and adjustment with manually where necessary afterwards. If your compositions have more than one line of text then you also need to consider vertical spaces between the lines which is called leading or line-spacing. You could also do it using Studio Space function just this time it will be vertical. Consider how the scale of your typeface works. In this case I talk about two things. First is the overall size of Type in relation to the format of your outcome, and how visible it is when it is viewed in its real site. For example my typeface is quite thin so I cannot create anything really smaller because just won't work. Another thing to consider about scale is whether all your letters or words need to be the same size. Having different sizes can make your outcome more dramatic. Also letters and words that need to be horizontal or in one line. You can always play around with rotation and move an individual letters or words in relation to each other. Also for example if you typeface is based on hexagon as an outer shape you can arrange your letters in the hexagonal grid and step. See what works for you. Finally I know it is your typeface and you are proud of it, but you can also use other typefaces to combine it with. Contrast makes design work and having second typeface in your composition can really make a difference. Just try to pick a typeface with which your word works well. Something simple will work fine because it won't distract from your typeface, and just don't go for another decorative typeface because it might be just too much. Now what are you waiting for go and make some cool design outcomes. Also consider how you will present them for example if you're making a T-shirt print 3D preview image of how is look on a T-shirt. Get everyone excited and show how you typeface comes to life. 13. Conclusion: I hope you have enjoyed this class and learnt something new. Being able to design decorative typefaces is pretty handy when it comes to designing posters, musical film related design materials and logotypes. I hope that this class will help you in future to experiment more and produce some awesome stuff. I'm looking forward to seeing your projects and I will be happy to provide feedback. Thank you, and I hope to see you soon in my next class.