The Adobe Illustrator Wow! Booklet for June 2013 CC Release: Tips, Tricks, and Step-by-Step Techniques with the New Creative Tools

8 The Adobe Illustrator WOW! Booklet for June 2013 CC Release

Touching Type

Modifying Editable Letter Characters

Overview: Create a point or area

text object; use the Touch Type tool

to select individual letter characters;

resize, rotate, and move characters in

a text object; manipulate letter spac-

ing; style the word using the Appear-

ance panel.

1

2

Finishing a map for a travel guide to Boquete, Panama,

cartographer Steve Gordon created a title for both the

map and the guide. His goal was to create a title that fea-

tured colorful, playful type and conveyed a rough, spon-

taneous design. Illustrator CC’s Touch Type tool and the

Appearance panel enabled Gordon to graphically manipu-

late individual letters in his title design.

1. Setting the type. Gordon began by selecting the Type

tool, clicking on the artboard, and typing “Boquete” in Il-

lustrator’s default font. Next, he individually selected each

character with the Type tool and changed its font and

color from the Control panel. When he nished, each let-

ter in the title displayed a unique font and color.

2. Distorting letters with the Touch Type tool. To give

the letters a playful, disorderly look, Gordon chose to

distort each character’s size, dimensions, angle, and letter

spacing. He also wanted to keep the type editable so he

could change fonts depending on how the design devel-

oped. Illustrator CC’s Touch Type tool, hidden under the

Type tool icon in the Tools panel, lets you graphically ma-

nipulate letters while preserving their editability as type. If

the Character panel is open, you can also click the Touch

Type tool button to enable the tool. As you move the cur-

sor toward the type object you want to edit, notice the

Touch Type cursor icon: It appears as a

T surrounded by a

box with corner points.

To change a letter, click on it with the Touch Type tool.

When you select a letter, Illustrator displays a selection

box with ve control points around the character. You’ll

use these points to edit each letter.

Top, “Boquete” typed in the default font; bot-

tom, after changing font and color for each letter

character

Left, uniformly resizing a character using the

upper-right control; right, using the top-center

control point to rotate the character

The Touch Type tool cursor (shown enlarged) on

the left; on the right, a selected letter character

The Point Is the Area

You can use the Touch Type tool

on letter characters in both point

and area type objects.

GORDON / CARTAGRAM, LLC