Text Types

In Illustrator we have three types of text that we can add to our document. These are “point text”, “paragraph text” and “text along a path.”

We use “Point type” when we want the text to appear on a horizontal or vertical line.

We use “paragraph text”, when we want to insert text into a paragraph.

And we use “text along a path”, you guessed it, when we want the text to follow an open or closed path. Let me first start with point text.

 

“Point type”

To add “point text”, first choose “Text” tool (1) in the toolbar of course, click somewhere in your document and you start typing.

As you notice all the text you type is placed, one behind the other, unless you press the Enter key on your keyboard, then the other text starts on a new line.

Like all other buttons with a black arrow in the toolbar, the”Text” tool also has underlying buttons and you can tear them from the toolbar, if you wish (2). Although this seems obvious to me, all these will be discussed in the course.

When you type in “point text”, you see that a point appears at the beginning of the text (a). At this point you can see that you are dealing with point text and how it is aligned.

If it is left-aligned, then this point is to the left of the text, if it is right-aligned, we find this point to the right of the text and if it is centered, then this can be found in the middle of the text.

 

There appears a line under the text (b), this is called the baseline.

By clicking on this baseline you can edit the text and format the text. This is true when you double-click the text with the “Select” tool.

By clicking and dragging the blocks on the edge of the text, you can pull. Place your cursor next to a block in the corner of the text, you can drag.

But now I’m already working on the formatting of text and this I want to tell you in the next section of this lesson.

 

Formatting text

To format text (any type of text), we have several possibilities.

One way is through the “Type” (3) in the menu bar. This opens a drop-down menu where we can choose the font and font size. Not my favorite way.

A second way is by using the “Character” and “Paragraph” buttons (4) in the options bar. This opens a panel in both cases, in which we can change the options. Better, but still not really my preference for the simple reason that this pane disappears when I click anywhere in the document.

A third way, and I prefer this, to open out the “Character” and “Paragraph” panels (5).

In this way, these windows are open, even if I select something else in the document.

If you can not see the lower options (7) in the panel, click the downward pointing arrow in the title bar of the pane (6) and select “Show Options” in the drop-down menu.The hotkey to open or close this is CTRL T for the “Character” panel and Ctrl Alt T for the “Paragraph” panel .

 

When the text is selected in your document and by “selected text” I do not mean that all text must be selected, only the text object, you can you place the cursor in the font box, navigate between different fonts with the “up” and “down” arrow keys on your keyboard and you can see a live preview in your document.

 

Or if you know what you want, you can type the first letters of the font in the font box and Illustrator will make an attempt to fill in the correct font.
When Illustrator finds the right font, click the Enter key on your keyboard.

 

What do we have in the “Character” panel?

Under the Font box, we have the “Font style” box. This seems obvious to me.

Below that we have the “Font Size” and “Leading” (line Spacing) boxes.

“Font size” seems clear.
“Leading” is thus the distance between the lines. When you set it to “Auto” then this is always 120% of the font size.
So, if your text size is 10 points, then your line spacing is 12 points if you choose “Auto”.

With the keyboard shortcut Alt and the downward pointing arrow, increase the “spacing”

With the keyboard shortcut Alt and the upward pointing arrow, lower the “spacing”

If you hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard pressed, changes the line spacing by 5 times as much. Default is set at two points, so with the Ctrl key you will increase or decrease the line spacing by 10 points.

You can also change this default setting.

How to do it, I willl tell you at the end of this lesson. Let me first go with a few quick keystrokes.

 

With the keyboard shortcut Alt and the right pointing arrow, increase your “Tracking”.
With the keyboard shortcut Alt and the left pointing arrow, reduce the “Tracking”.
If you only need to change the distance between a pair of characters, first select these letters.

Same here, if you wish to increase the spacing by a larger amount, hold the Ctrl key pressed.

 

If you only need to change the distance between two characters, you can use the “Set the tracking for selected characters’ box. First place the cursor between the two characters.

 

The four underlying options, “Horizontal Scale”, “Vertical Scale”, “Set Baseline Shift” and “Character Rotation” seem clear to me.

 

Four more keyboard shortcuts, which have nothing to do with text, but are very useful:

Ctrl to zoom in

Ctrl – to zoom out

Scroll wheel down and scroll wheel upward to scroll up or down in your document.

And hold the Ctrl button to scroll left and right in your document.

 

Text preferences

I had promised to tell you how you can change the default settings of certain options for text.
For this we open the “Preferences” dialog.
Click the shortcut Ctrl K on your keyboard and select “Type” from the drop-down menu by clicking the downward pointing arrow next to the top box.
All of these options seem clear to me.

Maybe just this.
By selecting the “Font Preview” and setting it to “Large”, the different sample fonts that you see when you click the “Type” button in the menu bar are displayed in a large format.

 

Featured Courses

• Downloading iPad Apps
• Lesson 1: Introduction to Publisher
• Lesson 65: File Formats