Type on a Path in Adobe Illustrator - A Graphic Design for Lunch™ Class

1. Type on a Path in Illustrator - Introduction: Hello, I'm Helen Bradley. Welcome to this graphic design for lunch class, type on a path in Adobe Illustrator. Graphic design for Lunch is a series of classes that teach a range of tips and techniques for creating designs and for working in applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop, and Procreate. Today we're looking at creating text on a path in Illustrator. We're going to start by looking at the tools for creating text on a path. Then we'll look at how to incorporate that text into a design such as an award banner. As you're working through these videos, you might see a prompt which lets you recommend this class to others. Please, if you're enjoying the class, give it a thumbs up. These recommendations help me get my classes in front of more people who just like you want to learn more about Illustrator. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. If you're ready now let's get started creating text on a path in Illustrator. 2. Type on a Path - Part 1: To create text on a pathway, we are going to stop by creating a path. I'm just dragging out a circle holding the ''Shift'' key as I do, and I'm holding this space bar just to move the circle into position, and I'll let go left mouse button and we have a circle. It's a white filled circle with a black stroke. Now, we can create type on the path, when the path is selected using the Type Tool, but it's a little bit fussy and you probably will want to use the type on path tool instead. What you are looking for, is for this indicated to appear right on the line and when you start typing for things to go round in a circle, well, that hasn't happened here. This is not the Type on a Path even though it purported to be that. I'm just going to undo everything here. I'm going to Type on a Path Tool because it's a lot more reliable the Type Tool itself. Illustrated, when you select that tool, expects you to be indicating a path to type on. I'm just going to click here on this path, and now when I type, you can say that things are taking off around the circle. Well, I'm going to type the word Illustrator. It's very small types, I'm just selecting either it, I'm just going to enlarge it. I'm going to select the Selection Tool, and let's have a look and see what we have here. These two indicate as a marking the left and the right edge of the possible area that this talk could consume. At the moment it's left aligned, so it's lined up against this margin here. If we were to write a line that you find that text goes all the way round the shape, because this is the right margin for the text, and if we center it, while it's going to be centered between these two margins here, which is all the way across here. Let's go back to left aligned text. If you want the text, for example, to be aligned across the top of the shape, you can adjust these, markers, I'm hovering over one of them and I have a straight line and an arrow pointing left. This is actually the right edge of the types. I'm just going to drag it around and put it over here, right on this anchor point. Now when I send to my type, it's centered between this marker and this marker. I'm going to adjust this one. Again, I'm going to hover over this point here, until I get a mouse pointed that is above and a right pointing arrow. Somewhat confusingly, this is the left margin phenotype, and I'm going to click and drag it back here. Now my text is arranged between this point here and this point here. Because I have it centered, it's centered right across the top of the shape. There's one more line here, and this is this one. When I hover over it, my mouse pointed turns to a bar with an up pointing arrow. This is the tool you use to flip the text across the line. If you ever want to flip your text across the line, you can do so using this indicator. You can also put it back using this indicator, if it flips when you least expect it. I'm just going to click and drag it up here. Now there are a couple of things tonight, I've just clicked away from this text and you'll say that the path is no longer visible. If you had wanted the path to be visible, you would need to save that path, first of all, because you're going to lose the path as soon as you create text over the path. You can also create text on a noncircular path. I'm actually going to just add another artboard here. I'm going to click on the Artboard Tool, and I'm going to alt, drag, and duplicate off the artboard over here. I'm going to add ''Shift'', so that I can just put it straight beside the existing artboard, and I select this and remove it. Let's go and create a line there. You can create a line with the Pen Tool or the Pencil Tool. I have the Pencil Tool and it's set to smooth. I'm just going to drag out a line here. This is my line. I'm going to add type along this path. Again, I'm going to my Type on a Path Tool, going to select it. I'm going to hover over the path until my cursor becomes this I-beam with a little line through it, Click once, and now I'm going to start typing. You can say that even though I clicked over here, I'm typing over here, and that's because I've got Center Type on. If I had a line left, then I'm going to move over to here, and if I have a line right, I'm going to type backwards. Going back to the Selection tool, we have all the same options here. I can move this point back to move my type further back down the line. I can also adjust this point. Just need to be really careful that I hover over here and I wait until my mouse pointer is correct. It should be a bar with a left pointing arrow. It's going to move it into position here, and if I want to center my type, then it's going to be centered between this point and this point. If I want to flip it over the line, I'm looking for this little midpoint here, and I'm just going to drag it and it flips along the line. Take it back, flips along the line this way. Now there are some other options for working with type on a path, which are accessible through the Type menu. You want to have your path selected that has type on it and choose type and then type on a path. We're going to choose type on a path options. I'm going to turn Preview on and I'm going to click "Flip". What that does is the same thing as we were doing. It just flips the text along the line. Let's put it back the way it came. You can also change the aligned to path options at the moment it's set to baseline. The baseline of this text is going to appear right along this line. If we were to select center, then they takes will be centered along the line. We can also choose Ascender. In this case, the text is aligned so that the Ascender, the tallest part of the font, is along the line. It appears that the characters that I've selected here possibly not the tallest characters in this font, which is why there's a gap here, which is not what we're saying when we select the baseline, for example, you can see here with baseline selected, these characters have their fate very firmly along the path. If you want to select the sender, you might think that the tops of these characters should be along the path. In some cases that may be the case in this fonts case, it is not. You can also adjust spacing over them. This drop-down list, you've got spacing options. You can increase or decrease the spacing here, to adjust the text. Choosing different values might give you a better fit for your text along the path. Just going to reset that to auto, I'm going to click ''Okay''. 3. Type on a Path - Part 2: Now that you know how to create text on path, it's time to look at a practical situation where you might want to do this. This is one of the banner images that I've created. I actually have a video on how to create those. If you want to use your own banner image from that video, feel free to do so. I'm also going to give you the link to download this image yourself, so you could use it if you don't have a banner image to use. I'm just going to open the Layers palette here because we need to say what we've got in here. What we've got is a symbol here that is this back part of the ribbon. We're going to lock that down because we don't want it to move. I'm also going to lock the checkered background here and the top ribbon for now. The only thing that is movable is this circular shape. This is just a single shape that was what the video was about, was showing you how to create this as a single shape. We want to put our text through the top of this. We're going to take a duplicate of this shapes. I'm just going to drag and drop it onto the new icon here. I'm going to lock down the back version of it. The back shape is locked down. I'm just going to press the letter D for default to set this to the default colors, for the second one has now lost all of its fancy bits and paces. We need to scale this inward. I'm going to hold Shift +Alt, that Shift option on a Mac. I'm just going to drag it in because I want to place that where I want my type to be. It might be easier at this stage if I actually made this, say throw in the middle. I'm just going to take off the fill so we can just say the stroke. I think it needs to be still a little bit smaller. I'm going to type illustrate it for lunch across the top half of this shape. We could do it just the way we have been, but you can also cut the shapes into two pieces just to make it a little easier still. I'm going to grab the scissors tool here. She has a toolbar position with the arrays at all. With the scissors tool, I just want to click on an anchor. I'm just locating the anchor point on this size of the circle and clicking once on it. I'm going to click again on this anchor point on this side. So now this is cut into two pieces. So there's a semicircle here and a semicircle here at the top. We're going to use the one at the top. So again, I'm going to my type on a path tool. I've got my semi-circle selected, so I'm just going to click to start typing. We know that this is working because we've lost the stroke around this shape and this little flashing cursor here is definitely along the path. So I'm just going to type illustrated for lunch. I'm going to select over the text and just increase the font size here. I want to center this between these two points. I'm going to click the Center Tool. It doesn't look centered to me, so we're going to investigate the problems with that in a minute. We're just going to click away from the type. If you need to change the color of the type or the font as I do, you'll select again on the shape and you'll go back to the Type Tool. What you have to do is locate the point at which this text finishes. I just going to click and drag. If you get something that you don't expect just press Control or command Z to undo it and try again. It can be a little bit fiddly until you know exactly where to click. So I'm going to make my text white. Let's just click away here. When I click on this shape, you can see that the end point for this type is over here, but the starting point is over here, which is why it's centered in such a peculiar way. Well, I'm going to go here and locate the indicator that's going to let me move this point. I've got my bar with my arrow pointing in that direction. I'm just going to move this mark up so it's approximately opposite this marker. So the text is now centered between the left margin and the right margin for the type. That's going to click away. That's looking pretty good. I'm actually going to just click to lock down that text. I don't need this bottom path anymore, so I can just click and delete it. I would like a little bit of text along here though. What I want to do is to find a path that is the shape of this ribbon. For that I'm going to undo or unlock this top piece. This is this piece of ribbon. What I want to do is I want to get the top side of it. I'm going to actually just click away from the shape. I'm going to click on this part of the line. There's a little bit more over here. I'm going to shift click on it. I've now selected everything from this anchor point here, all the way across to this anchor point here. It's not totally clear that that is what I've selected, but it will be in just a minute. I'm going to choose edit copy and then edit paste in place. What's happened is that I now have a line that I've copied and pasted in place and it has a fill and no stroke. That's why we're seeing this pace of color here. Well, I'm going to flip the fill and stroke. I'm going to select the stroke and I'm going to make it black or some color that we can see more clearly. I'm going to the selection tools. I want to select the whole line. I'm just going to move it down. This gives me a path that is exact copy of the top of this ribbon shape. I'm going to go to my ribbon, which is this pace here. I'm just going to lock that down. If you have a look in the last palette here, you'll see, I've got two different shapes. What I need to do is to join them together so they become a path along which my text can flow. I'm going choose object path join. That's going to make them a single path that now we can put text along. So you want to make sure that if you have multiple lines, for example, forming a path that you actually join them together before you start this process. Let's go back and select this now. Let's click on the Type tool, click on the line, and the whole line loses its stroke, telling us that we're actually going to be typing from here to here, or potentially we could type from here to here. I've typed create type on a path in Illustrator and it hasn't fit. We know that there's some texts that hasn't fit on our path because we've got a little box here with a plus sign in it and it's colored red. But I'm going to select my text before I leave here and let's just make it the color that we want it to be. I wanted to be a fill color, no a stroke. I just might want to darken my fill color a little bit. I'm going back to the Selection Tool and we can see what's happening here. Well, this is the left edge of our type and you can see that's well into the past. We will want to move it across so that we can potentially fit more text in here. So I'm looking for the indicator to be the line pointing inwards and I'm just going to drag this back out. Here's the other margin here, and it's pretty well positioned at the end of the path here. I'm going to make sure I have center selected and this text is now centered along the path. There are a couple of things to be aware of here. One is that sometimes it can be really, really difficult to pick up these pointers here. If you find that they're difficult to pick up and you really absolutely must see that line with the arrow or else it's just not going to work, you can switch to the Direct Selection Tool. Sometimes I've found that using the Direct Selection Tool instead of the Selection Tool makes it just a little bit easier to hover over this shape and find the exact mouse pointer that you're looking for. So if you're having difficulty, it can help to switch between these tools and just see if you can get one to work where the other one is not. So there's some text added to our shape here. If you think that this is not positioned correctly, then we can use the Selection Tool to go back and select this path. In this case, you will have to choose the Selection Tool because you want to choose the entire path. Then you can move the path up a little bit as you move the path, that text that is attached to that path goes with it. 4. Type on a path - Part 3: Before we finish up we're going to look and see how we would create two pieces of text on a path. We're going to have texts going in this direction and some texts across the bottom here. Again, if you don't have a shape similar to this that you can use, I'm going to give you one that you can download. I'm going to open up the last pallet so we can see what's going on. This is just a single shape. We're again going to duplicate this. I'm going to drag it onto the new layer icon, I'm going to lock down the bottom version. I'm going to select the top version and press the letter "D" to get my default colors. Again, hold "Alt" and "Shift", that's option "Shift" on the Mac. I'm just going to drag everything in here. I'm actually going to make it no fill so again, I can see roughly where I'm dragging. This is the path that I'm going to use. But in this case, I want to cut the path in a different place. It will help me to cut it in the same place if I use the ruler. I'm going to choose "View" and then "Rulers", and then click "Show Rulers". I'm just going to drag a ruler line down here. I'm just going to drag it down so that I can mark out very clearly where I need to cut this path. Now, I've got the guide selected right now, so I want to select the path. I'm just going to click on this. Guides in Illustrator are just lines like anything else. I'm going to the scissors tool and I'm just going to click to cut the path at this guide point. I'm going to click to cut it here too. Once I've done that, I should have two halves. Half a circle here, well, just under half a circle and just over half a circle here. I don't need my guide any longer, so I'm just going to drag and drop that onto the trash can. Now I'm going to add a piece of text across the top here. Again, type on a path tool, I have my path selected, just going to click here, and I'm going to start typing. Just type my text, I'm just going to select it and enlarge it. Now I'm going to select an extended font because I want this to extend out quite a bit. You can see that the text is going to consume more than half a circle, so that's why we created a slightly larger path that for this text. I'm just going to increase it in size a little bit. I've run off the edge here, but we've got plenty of room to move our text around. Now before I finish up with the text right now, I'm going to re-color it. I'm just going to select a dark blue color and let's just make it a bit darker than it was. I'm going back to the selection tool. I'm going to select here and what I'm looking for is this marker. You can see that we've got a little red marker over here indicating that there's some text here that is not fitting. I'm just going to drag this back. I'm going to drag it all the way back to the starting point because the right edge marker for the text is over here. If I now center the text, it's going to work perfectly. There's our best local business restaurant category. Down here we're going to type 2015-2016. I'm going to select this. I'm going to select my type on a path tool, let's click here, and let's start typing. Now the text's gone in the wrong direction, but that's fine. Now I'm going to select over the text. To do that, I'm pressing "Shift" and the left arrow just as I would if the texts were up the right way. I want to color it the same way as this other text is colored. I'm just going to go and get the eyedropper tool. I'm just going to click on that text to borrow its formatting. I'm going back to my selection tool and you can see here that the markers are here and here. Well, I want this marker all the way across here. Again, I'm going to pick up that little indicator when it is the bar and the arrow and just drag it across to here. Now my text is centered. It's centered but it's upside down so now I'm just going to flip it across the line. Having flipped it across the line, of course it's now not where I want it to be, but I can push it down there using the type on a path option. I'm going to select "Type", "Type on a Path", "Type on a Path Options". I'm going to click "Preview" so we can see it. I'm going to adjust this to "Ascender" instead of "Baseline". That just pushes it down here. Now there's another way that you could do it. I'm going to put it back up here with baseline. I'm just going to click "Cancel" to get out of here. What you could do is you can go to the character dialogue here with the text selected, and you can push it down the page with a baseline shift. What I'm going to do is I'm going to decrease the baseline here. Again, that pushes the text into this area. It also pushes the numbers apart a little bit. Having done that, you may want to decrease the tracking. You may want to bring the tracking in a little bit closer so that the numbers are a little closer together. They tend to get a bit pulled apart if you alter the baseline. But that's another option for you to rearrange the text so it looks as if it's sitting correctly in between these lines. Your project for this class is going to be to reproduce these banners with the text on a path. Now you can use your own banners or you can use mine. Just download them from the links that you'll find in the class project area. When you've finished with your designs, you can post them in the project area for us all to see. I hope that you've enjoyed this course and that you've learnt a bit about placing text on a path in Illustrator. If you did enjoy the course and if you see a prompt to recommend this class to others, please give it a thumbs up. This helps others to identify this as a class that they may want to take. If you'd like to leave a comment, please do so. I read and respond to all of your comments and I look at and respond to all of your class projects. My name's Helen Bradley. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Graphic Design for Lunch, and I look forward to seeing you in an upcoming episode soon.