In today's tutorial, we will cover 6 must new tips using text in Adobe Illustrator. Let the fun begins.
1. Roman Hanging Punctuation Setting
The first must new tip for using text in Illustrator is utilizing the roman hang and punctual on settings. When we have text in Illustrator by default the text would align with the punctuation along whichever side that you align text to. For example, you can see here the quotation marks at the top are in line with lettering now this can be annoying we're simply not ideal for your design. So to change this option open the Paragraph window and activate the Roman Hanging Punctuation Setting. I've made a red line to demonstrate the changes between having these settings activated or have it turned off. Keep this in mind for your next design when using text in Illustrator.
2. Fractional Width
The second must no tip is another setting that's hidden away this time it's in the Character window. You can press Ctrl + T to open up the character window. In the fly down menu, in the top right of this window, you will find a setting known as the Fractional Width. It is a more modern and more advanced method of spacing apart lettering in your text and to be honest you probably should always have this setting activated. You can see a slight difference when it is turn on or off. You can see the coding between each letter is really poor and quite ugly in some areas.
The following tip in Illustrator when using text is to use TextBoxes. Often we just grab a type tool and start typing or maybe just copy some text. This often leaves long text that is awkward to edit and quite difficult to work with. A more professional and easier way to work is to take a type tool, but draw an input box that will allow you to set the boundaries of your text, areas on the design before typing single thing and, of course, from here you can enter and make changes in character style, and paragraph windows.
4. Avoiding Outlining Text
The next tip is something I was getting wrong for the longest time in my design workflow. And that is Avoiding Outlining Text as much as possible when working in Illustrator. We want to be able to edit our lettering later in a project and if we outline the text to a vector shape that will prevent us from doing this. So the first instance where we can actually avoid outlining text is by making a Clipping Mask. Bring the text layer to the front, select everything and then right-click and click on a clipping mask. By applying a clipping mask to the text allows us to still edit the text.
Changing the text to a Compound Shape would allow us to add many different effects or text such as the gradients and other techniques but we will still be able to change the lettering and the spacing or our typography. This can be activated in the Pathfinder Window. And lastly, we can use any of the top row functions in the pathfinder window. All we need to do is hold down the Alt and then use the function in the pathfinder window.
5. Favorite Fonts List
Number five on our list is creating a favorite list of your fonts in the character window. All we need to do is to click the star icon next to your most used fonts and will be added to the favorites list. This will help you save time in your workflow as your most-used fonts will be right there waiting for you without you have to scroll through the entire library.
6. Glyphs panel
The last tip on our list is history utilize the Glyphs panel. You can open up the glyphs window in Window - Type - Glyphs. In this window, you can see and use every single glyph symbols of a specific font. Every font family has different choices for you to use. To use the glyphs all you need to do is double-click on the glyphs and it'll be added to your text.
I hope I managed to show you some new tricks and that you learned something new. Thanks for reading the article and we’ll read on in the next one.😀😀
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