by Chad Neuman

The Pathfinder palette is a useful to when using Adobe Illustrator. Here’s a tutorial on creating text and gradient clouds using this palette.

Step One
Open Adobe Illustrator and open a New Document. Select the Text tool. Type out the word, “Clouds” and highlight it and change the font to one that is thick. I used Cooper. Set the Fill color to Black and the Stroke should be set to None.

Step Two
With the Selection tool selected, hover over the “Clouds” text and right-click over it. Click Create Outlines. This will outline the text.

Step Three
Hover over “Clouds” again and right-click. Click Ungroup.

Step Four
Now we can move the various letters and re-size them with the Selection tool. Click-and-drag a corner bounding box to resize it and click-and-drag over the letter to move it.

Step Five
Click-and-hold the Rectangle tool on the toolbar and click the Ellipse tool. Click-and-drag a few circles. Hold Shift to make perfect circles.

Step Six
Choose the Rectangle tool and click-and-drag along the bottom of the circles.

Step Seven
Cover up any areas in the middle that aren’t covered, using the Ellipse, Rectangle, or Rounded Rectangle tool.

Step Eight
Go to Window>Pathfinder to open the Pathfinder palette.

Step Nine
With the Selection tool, click-and-drag around all the shapes and click the Add icon on the Pathfinder palette (the top-left corner of the palette). This will make all the shapes one shape.

Step Ten
Click-and-drag the various letters with the Selection tool and place them so they’re partially covering the cloud shape we created.

Step Eleven
Click-and-drag around all the letters and objects with the Selection tool. Click the Add icon on the Pathfinder palette.

Step Twelve
Change the Fill color to the gradient swatch on the Swatches palette. You can change the angle of the gradient by using the Gradient tool from the toolbar. Click-and-drag over the object to set the angle. Change the two colors in the gradient by clicking-and-dragging them from the Swatches palette onto the Gradient palette.

Step Thirteen
Add a few birds by drawing them with the Pencil tool.

Step Fourteen
Draw a few with the Pencil tool and move them over the cloud object by clicking-and-dragging with the Selection tool.

by Chad Neuman

Let’s create the layout for planning a website portfolio. By doing so, we’ll learn a few techniques, including applying gradients to simulate a dried paint effect, the Add to Shape command in the Pathfinder palette, clipping masks, and typing on a path.

Step 1
Open a new file in Adobe Illustrator. With the Ellipse tool, click-and-drag out a few overlapping circles. Hold down Shift to draw perfect circles. They should all together form a “cloud” shape.

Step 2
Change the Fill color to an orange swatch from the Swatches palette. Set the Stroke to None.

Step 3
Click-and-drag around all the shapes with a Selection tool to select them all. Open the Pathfinder palette (Window>Pathfinder) and click Add to Shape to combine them all. Press Expand to get rid of the inner edges and make it truly one object.

Step 4
Next, deselect the cloud so we don’t change its color. Draw out a few long, vertical rounded rectangles with the Rounded Rectangle tool. Change its Stroke to None and set the Fill to a gradient. In the Gradient palette, click-and-drag a dark orange and a regular orange to the opposite sides, like shown here.

Step 5
Click-and-drag with the Gradient tool to make the darker orange appear on the bottom side. The effect is accomplished by having a little bit darker orange near the bottom of the paint drips, much like dried paint, which would be a little bit darker.

Step 6
Now let’s add some text for the parts of the website. With the Pen tool, create a curved path that follows the top curves of the cloud. To do this, click first at one point, then let go and then click where the end of a curve is, but don’t let go yet. Drag it to curve the path. After drawing a curve, be sure to click again on the most recently created point to reset the angle so you don’t get awkward curves.

Step 7
With the Text tool, click somewhere on the path and enter in the text.

Step 8
Select the text and go to Edit>Copy and Edit>Paste in Front. Then move the front text for now to select the back text and add some arrowheads to it by going to Effect>Stylize>Add Arrowheads.

Step 9
Make the back arrowhead text a different color from the text in front, like blue. Then move the front text back on top of the arrowhead text.

Step 10
Add a photo by placing it (File>Place). If you’d like it to have rounded corners, just draw a Rounded Rectangle over it and when selecting both the photo and the rounded rectangle, go to Object>Clipping Mask>Make. Add a background black rounded rectangle and Arrange it behind the photo for a border. Add some other decorations, such as stars with the Star tool or birds or arrows with the Pen tool.

Now we have the basic design down for a portfolio website. Using this, we’d use Adobe Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive along with Adobe Photoshop to layout out the functional website.

One of the coolest aspects of Illustrator’s Text tool is its flexibility once the text is outlined. You can then edit the text just like any other Illustrator path, moving the letters around and even the lines and shapes around.

Step 1
Start out by typing a simple phrase, a company name, or a slogan. Include the ampersand in it for this example. I used the font Rosewood. Click once with the Text tool to make the first word, then click elsewhere with the Type tool and type the ampersand, then click somewhere else with the Type tool for the other word.

Step 2
With the Selection tool, click the ampersand. Click-and-drag a corner to make it bigger.

Step 3
Let’s make the text more editable for our purposes of reshaping (rather than changing the character of the font). With the Selection tool, Control-click (PC: Right-click) over each word as well as the ampersand and click Create Outlines.

Step 4
Next, with the Selection tool, Control-click (PC: Right-click) again over each word and the ampersand and click Ungroup.

Step 5
Zoom in the art to see that we can now edit the text as shapes. With the Selection tool, click-and-drag the letters to move them closer together. Click-and-drag on a corner box to resize specific letters. With the Direct Selection tool, click an Anchor point to stretch the letter or make it conform to another letter.

Step 6
Click-and-hold the Pen tool to get the Add Anchor Point tool. Click on the paths were there should be another anchor point to add one. Then use the Direct Selection tool to move it.

Step 7
In some spots, you can have one letter’s stroke adjacent to another. Be creative with how the shapes of the letters conform to the other letters.

Step 8
Now instead of a boring slogan we have various sizes and shapes for the letters, some flush with each other.

Step 9
Try adding a gradient fill. Click-and-drag with the Selection tool a box around all of shapes (or go to Select>All). Go to Window>Gradient, select colors from the Swatch (Window>Swatches), and choose a gradient to finish the look. You may also want to color specific letters differently. For this just select each letter separately, then choose a color from the Swatches palette.

Learn to create warped text that is still editable on top of another object by creating a pirate’s map.

Sometimes it’s necessary to create outlines of text so that it can be distorted. But perhaps you want to be able to modify text after it’s warped. Here’s a neat way to do that. September 19th was Talk Like a Pirate Day, so let’s make a pirate’s map using this envelope warping technique. Here’s the image file I used: a map of Madagascar.

Step 1
Open a new document in Adobe Illustrator. Choose the Text tool, and click-and-drag and area to insert some text. You can type in some text, and Edit>Copy from another source and Edit>Paste into the text box. I’ve inserted some text from the classic book, Treasure Island, which is in the public domain.

Step 2
Change the font style and size to your liking by clicking-and-dragging over it with the Text tool then changing the font on the Options Bar or under the Type pull-down menu. I’ve used Snell Roundhand at 20 points to get a more “pirate” feel.

Step 3
Choose the Rectangle tool, and change the Fill and Stroke to None. Click-and-drag a box just around the text.

Step 4
Select both the new box and the text underneath it by clicking-and-dragging around both with the Selection tool. Go to Object>Envelope Distort>Make with Top Object.

Step 5
Go to Object>Envelope Distort>Reset With Warp. Choose a shape for the warp; the Fish shape makes for a good curved piece of paper look if the settings are correct – Horizontal Selected, Bend % set to 10, and the Horizontal Distortion set to 14 and the Vertical Distortion set to 17.

Step 6
Go to File>Place and choose the map of Madagascar. Click Place.

Step 7
With the Selection tool, click the placed art and resize by clicking-and-dragging a corner bounding box. Then click on the Live Trace pull-down arrow and choose Color 6. This will convert the map to a vector object.

Step 8
With the map selected, go to Object>Envelope Distort>Make with Warp. Enter the same settings as before: Fish shape, Horizontal Selected, Bend at 10%, and Horizontal Distortion set to 14 and Vertical Distortion set to 17.

Step 9
With the map selected, go to Object>Arrange>Send to Back and then change it’s Transparency to 70% (Window>Transparency).

Step 10
Click-and-drag the map directly underneath the text. Now both the map and the text are curving on the same shape coordinates. What’s neat about this is that you can still edit the text. Go to Object>Envelope Distort>Edit Contents and use the Text tool to edit the text. I changed the text “shook the four corners” to bold.

Text layout doesn’t have to be boring. Designer David Carson became famous using unique typographic effects, one of which was flowing text in an unusual way. In many magazines, text not only conveys information but joins the photos and colors to become art and part of the style of the magazine as well. Here’s a way to thread text on paths, which has many possibilities once you get the basic concept. Let’s thread text on path shapes to create unique magazine layout designs.

Step 1
Open a new Illustrator file and place a raster image, or open a vector image. This will provide as the background to our mock magazine layout. Optionally, pick one which curves or straight lines to flow the text around.

Step 2
Next, let’s create a path the text will initially flow on. You can create Circle, or us the Pen tool, but for this example I drew a curvy line with the Pencil tool. Optionally, make the Stroke black to see it; make the Fill None.

Step 3
Now we’ll insert the text. Click-and-hold the Text tool to bring out the other options. Click the Type On a Path tool. Click on the path where you want to have the text begin to flow.

Step 4
Go to File>Place and select a Microsoft Word document or another text document to insert. Once it is selected, click Place. Click OK in the next dialog. The text will flow from the point we selected.

Step 5
Select the text you want to change (font style, size, for example) and change it by selecting a new style with the Control Palette. I changed the title to a little bit bigger size font for emphasis.

Step 6
Now let’s flow the text from the path to another area. With the Selection tool, click the little red box in the lower right-hand corner of the path. Where we click next, the text will begin where it was cut off from our path (assuming your path was too short for the entire text document’s contents). Click-and-drag an area to have the text flow into a rectangle shaped text box.

Step 7
To make a unique text flow, with the Selection tool, hover over a corner of the new text box and click-and-drag to rotate it. If there is still text to be flowed, click the red box again, this time in the new text box. Click-and-drag to make one or two more text boxes, repeating the steps to link the threaded text.

Step 8
With the Selection tool, click-and-drag the boxes or paths to move the text to your liking. What’s cool about this technique is that the text flows automatically if you insert or delete text. For example, if you added more to the title, the text would flow to the next text box. There are many possibilities with flowing threaded text: try flowing text from a Circle to a Spiral, or from two block paragraphs into a wave shape drawn with the Pencil tool. All of these can create unique and unusual magazine-style layouts.