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Adobe Illustrator CC - Essentials Training

How to break apart & destroy text & fonts using Adobe Illustrator CC

Daniel Walter Scott

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Hey there, in this video we're going to start destroying Type. Like this Boom up here, we're going to cut the centers out, we drop the inner bit. This 'L' here, we get to wrap around a little bit different. We'll drop the 'p', we'll smash the 'i'. It's really easy to do in Adobe Illustrator. Let's go and do it now.

So to break apart Type and start manipulating it we're going to kind of just work on the top here. I'm going to grab the 'Type Tool', click once, and type the word 'Boom'. Coom, 'Boom' will do. Exclamation mark. I'm going to pick a font, quite a nice big 'Abril Fatface'. That's the kind of font I'm into at the moment. I'm going to make it nice and big with the fonts. With the Black Arrow, it's actually sometimes easier just to hold down 'Shift', and grab the corner of it. This is my font, I'm going to keep a copy of it because there's so many times that I end up breaking it apart and forgetting what the font was later on.

So, with it selected, all I need to do, is go to 'Object', actually no, go to 'Type', and there's one that says 'Create Outlines'. 'Create Outlines' destroys the font. So it's no longer-- you can't grab the Type Tool and edit it. I have to go back to that version, but now it's bits and pieces. There's a few things I can do to it. Remember, the Black Arrow is for moving it around, and the White Arrow, 'Direct Selection Tool' allows me to see all these Anchor Points, and that's what I want to do.

What I'm going to do is just click once on the inside of this. Delete once, delete again, so deleting twice on the keyboard because I want this kind of, I don't know, stencily style Boom. Just double clicking, well I'm not, I'm clicking once, and then deleting twice to get rid of the inside parts. It's kind of what I want to do. You can also grab it, and say, I want to grab all of these, and with my White Arrow, I'm dragging a box around them all. And I can select all of these now. I'm not sure what I'm doing now, now I'm really wrecking it. A couple of points, I'm holding 'Shift' while I'm dragging just to get them move around. Don't like that one, but you get the idea.

Next thing I want to do is, let's say that-- so that's-- I think that we've done. And what we might want to do is, let's grab the Type Tool, this happens a bit where you've got a nice font, let's say I'm going to use-- I'm going to use Lorem Ipsum, but instead of Abril I'm going to use Lust, it's quite similar but there's a Script option. These are TypeKit fonts that you can go get for free. So I'm going to click on this. And I like it, I'm going to copy a version of it. What I want to do is, I want to change the color for no reason. I want this 'L' to maybe wrap around this 'e', or something else. Do something, interact with the Type a little differently. That's where outlining it can be helpful.

Remember, 'Type', 'Create Outlines'. And I can grab my 'White Arrow', I can zoom in a bit. I'm going to grab these three points here. I'm just going to drag them, kind of maybe around this 'e'. It's a bit of a long stretch, I could leave it like that or I can start grabbing, say these handles here, there's this handle. I want to kind of drag it out a little bit. I want you to be down. A little bit more. I'm totally wrecking this, for the Type I prefer. Especially if you made Lust, I'm really sorry for this. You get what I'm trying to do here, right? I'm trying to kind of make it move and do other things. Not my best, okay? But, you get the idea. Any of these can be changed, I can grab this corner, drag it out. I can grab this chunk, make it longer. Now I'm totally wrecking it. I should have grabbed the bottom of this. Oh yes, Dan, you've made a great font.

So that is outlining Type, and destroying it. Jump ahead a couple of videos where we start looking at putting images inside of it. It will be under a category called Images where we click images inside of that, but for now, that is it for breaking apart and destroying Text in Adobe Illustrator. See you in the next video.