Author
Updated
4/12/2021Released
3/5/2018Note: Because this is an ongoing series, viewers will not receive a certificate of completion.
Skill Level Intermediate
Duration
Views
- Hi, I'm Nigel French, welcome to Type Tips. This week, some experimental typography in Illustrator. These letter forms were created using the tilde key trick. And the tilde key is this one. It's location on your keyboard may vary. You choose one of Illustrator's shape tools and then you hold down the tilde key, and you can continuously draw to build up these interesting shapes. You can combine this with the shift key and/or the option or alt key. Now you do need to be willing to embrace some randomness here. I found that the arc tool gave me the best result. And in drawing letter shapes, I found that I needed to let up on my mouse button with every change of direction. So when drawing the W, there's one movement, and there's a second, and a third, and a fourth. Now in order to keep me on track, I also decided to work with a template. I've just created a template layer, which I'm going to lock, and I'll just be drawing over these letter shapes just as guidance for myself, and I added some guides as well. So now to recreate this, I'll come to my arc tool, hold down my tilde key, and draw my letter forms. Now, of course I can experiment with the different options for the arc tool, but I'm just going to go with them as they are. Now when you have your letter forms, template is currently turned off, I'll switch the stroke to a fill, and then I'm going to fill the shapes with a gradient and come and change the blending mode. In this case, I'm going to go with soft light and just so we can see what's going on, let me hide the edges, and I'll reduce the opacity on that to around 50%. So, like I said, you do need to be willing to embrace a certain degree of randomness, but combining this technique with transparency with a gradient and with a blending mode, you can get some very interesting results.
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New This Week
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The tilde key trick2m 37s
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Introduction
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Welcome42s
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March 2018
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Extreme drop caps16m 7s
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Working with pull quotes10m 48s
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Designing on a diagonal grid7m 57s
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Golden ratio5m 24s
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April 2018
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Creating a word search8m 50s
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Color fonts3m 28s
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Working with picture fonts8m 10s
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May 2018
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Designing with variable type6m 22s
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June 2018
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Text wrap effects6m 40s
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Optical type sizing4m 1s
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July 2018
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Creating info boxes11m 15s
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August 2018
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Using the Chartwell font5m 29s
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Five tips to better tables8m 58s
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September 2018
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Create a listings page6m 19s
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October 2018
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Photographing Type2m 38s
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November 2018
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Sans Forgetica1m 41s
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December 2018
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Metrics vs. optical kerning7m 34s
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Autogenerated captions8m 1s
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January 2019
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Optical vertical centering4m 13s
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February 2019
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March 2019
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Tracking tips4m 57s
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Adding flush spaces2m 35s
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April 2019
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Creating mirrored folios4m 11s
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Monospace type3m 9s
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May 2019
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Adding a shaded shadow5m 11s
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June 2019
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Knockout text2m 44s
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July 2019
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The Glyphs panel6m 53s
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August 2019
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"Nut" or stacked fractions2m 16s
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September 2019
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Creating a travel book cover9m 15s
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October 2019
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November 2019
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December 2019
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Typesetting a quote4m 33s
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January 2020
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Numbers in circles6m 22s
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BLOKK8m 17s
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Stroke7m 3s
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February 2020
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Spacing after a headline3m 14s
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Typographic map9m 31s
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Ornaments7m 20s
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Word spacing6m 19s
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March 2020
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Catchwords1m 39s
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Text wrap spacing3m 10s
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Infographic4m 33s
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April 2020
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Create a Victorian type poster11m 51s
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May 2020
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Zero-width characters6m 8s
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June 2020
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July 2020
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Designing a product guide5m 53s
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August 2020
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September 2020
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Creating shaped text7m 48s
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Using a dotless i1m 33s
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October 2020
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Desert island type7m 30s
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November 2020
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Illustrator clipping masks3m 12s
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Glyph shifting with OpenType1m 52s
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Align to glyph guides5m 1s
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December 2020
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Auto-size text frames5m 17s
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Go bigger1m 52s
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January 2021
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February 2021
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Calendar2m 50s
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Word counts in InDesign3m 59s
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March 2021
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In praise of ampersands3m 5s
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April 2021
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Video: The tilde key trick