From the course: Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

Changing the font and type style - Illustrator Tutorial

From the course: Illustrator 2020 One-on-One: Fundamentals

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Changing the font and type style

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- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how to change the font and the type style associated with your text. And there are tons of tips and tricks associated with this one. So let's say you want to format all of the text associated with a specific text block, then just go ahead and click on it with the black arrow tool. And you should see the font listed up here in the control panel. If you don't, which means that basically, Illustrator's running out of room, then you can click the word character to bring up a pop up version of the character panel. Which by the way, allows you to change the formatting associated with specific characters of type. For those of you who are crazy about keyboard shortcuts, you can press mash your fist, F for font. That is Control + Shift + Alt F here on the PC or Command + Shift + Option F on the Mac, which is going to bring up the character panel wherever it may be and highlight that font option. And as long as I'm here, I'm going expand the character panel by clicking on this double arrow icon, like so. In that way, we'll see all of the character options that are available to us. But in as much as I love keyboard shortcuts, I find it easier just to click on the word character or if you can see the font, just click in it. And then if you want to see a list of fonts installed on your system, then click this down pointing arrow head like so. You're going to see the most recently used fonts at the top of the list and notice that the fonts preview as you hover over them. You're also going to see the number of styles associated with any given font. So for example, Algerian right here doesn't have a number next to it because there is just one style associated with this font. Whereas Arial down here has nine different styles. And if you want to see those type styles then just click on the down pointing arrow head, and then you can scroll down the list and hover over a different style if you like. All right, so that's one way to work. Another way is to just click inside the font once again and enter the first few letters of the font name. For example, if I type in ver, I'm going to get the various styles of Verdana right here. As well as Engravers MT on this specific machine. And so, I'll just go ahead and select Verdana from the list let's say. You can also arrow through your fonts if you like. And to do that, just click on a font to select it and then press the down arrow key to advance in alphabetical order through your fonts. If all of a sudden, the font name goes blank, that's because you've selected a symbol font such as Webdings right here. And so if I press it down arrow again, I now get Wide Latin and so forth. If you want to move backward through your fonts, once again in alphabetical order, then you press the up arrow key and eventually it'll come back to Verdana like so. All right, another option that's available to you when you click this down arrow button, notice if I hover over a font such as Verdana, I'm going to see this approximately equal sign here. That's going to show me a list of similar fonts. And these are similar fonts in Adobe's opinion by the way. But it will let you scroll through, in our case, other Sans Serif fonts that are installed on the system such as Calibri, which is pretty common. Alright now let's take a look at type style. I'm going to click on the font name right there and I'm going to enter Museo. Which is a font that's found on this system. The problem is that we're still filtering for fonts that are similar to Verdana. Which is a Sans Serif font, whereas Museo is a Slab Serif font. So I'll just go ahead and click on the back button there and notice that I have a bunch of Museos that I can choose from. I'll just go ahead and select the regular style which is 300 right here. And I want you to know that when you're working in Illustrator, you don't turn things bold by pressing Control + B or Control + Shift + B or something like that, and you don't turn things italic by pressing Control or Control + Shift + I. Nor do we have any icons to turn things bold and italic and that's because Illustrator sticks to the designer style. And so notice where Museo Slab is concerned, and this may not be on your system by the way but you'll have other fonts that work this way. We don't even have a bold. We just have weights that are associated with each one of these type styles. Going all the way up to 1,000 which is generally considered black. So a very, very heavy style whereas 100 is considered to be thin. Which is a very, very light style. And of course, we have a few italics too. And by the way, you can arrow through those if you like. Just by clicking on the type style and then pressing the down arrow key to advance from one style to another. Or you can press the up arrow key to move backward. All right, but having a lot of type styles is not always going to be your option. Notice if I click inside the font once again and press the down arrow key to switch to MV Boli, whatever in the world that is, it only has one style which is regular. And that is all. And those are a few different ways to switch out the font and type style. Whether it be slogging through a menu, entering a few characters in the font or style name or arrowing through every single font installed on your system here inside Illustrator.

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