Setting type onto a path

- [Instructor] We can also attach type to a path in Illustrator, and in the file that I'm using here, I've got this small device which I'm going to attach this small line of text to. Just going to hold down Command and Spacebar here to zoom in to make it easier for you to see. Let's move across like so. Hopefully that's contrasting enough against the artboard for you to be able to see that clearly, and I'm going to just select all of that text and copy it.

Not too worried about the typeface this is using at the moment, and I'll hit the Escape key to come out of that text. So, I've drawn a path already which will hold the baseline of that text, so basically, it will be drawn with the bottom parts of the text along this line. So I'm just going to select that path so you can see it there, and in fact, I'll change the color of the stroke here, just for a moment, just to make it slightly easier to see. It'll disappear in a moment, but I'll make it red there, or maybe bright magenta, just for the minute, so here you are.

You can see that path now, and I'm going to get my Type tool, so I'm going to tap T, and this is a little tip, because there is a Type and a Path tool in the toolbox. If I go over to the Type tool and long press on the Type tool, you'll see there is one just there. I'm going to show you a way around it if you're able to use it, and that is this. If I move into the shape, as you saw with area text, it wants to fill that area with text, however, if I hold down the Alt or Option key, the icon changes, and it becomes the Type on a Path tool, and if I click, you'll now see that has type around that path.

So what I'm going to do is replace the selected text that's there with the text I've got, so I'm just going to literally paste, Command + V or Control + V, and my text is now available, so I can select it, like so, nice and round in a circle, like that, and what I'd also like to do at this point is change it to all caps, so I'm going to go to the Type menu and choose Change Case, UPPERCASE, just there. That's much better, and now I'll change the typeface.

You don't have to, but I'm just going to change mine, just here, I have something in mind, so I have Avenir Next Condensed there, and I think I'll use the Medium or Demi Bold option. There we go, perfect. And that's exactly the way I would like that to be apart from the fill color, which I'll change just now to white, like so. Okay, I'm going to zoom in a bit further on that, and I'm not going to hold down the Spacebar here because I've got active type. If I wanted to pan with active type, you hold down the Alt or Option key, and then you can move that around, like so.

Okay, at this point, I'm going to hit the Escape key so that you can see the objects associated, or the guides associated with text on a path. There are three, and if I just move this one at the top here, you'll notice the text is moving as well, because this is where the text ends, just there. Text can't go beyond that point, and if I move this one here, this is where it starts, so you can define points on the path where the text begins and ends.

And then this one here allows me to move the text around as a whole, so if I bring this around to the top here, for example, okay, if I can just get that onto the top there. I'm having a bit of a moment with it. There we go, okay, so I've brought that around to the top, but now I need to change where the text can begin and where the text can end, and the reason this is giving me happy fun times at the moment is because I've got it set to center alignment, which is actually what I'd want ordinarily.

If I bring that end around to the bottom here, and bring the start around to the bottom here, you can see the text just resolves itself. If I change it to left-aligned, Shift + Command or Shift + Control + L to do that, you can see there how I've got a bit more control over exactly where it is on the path because I'm moving the starting point, and similarly with right-aligned text. If I changed it to that, then the endpoint there would be how I could control where it is. But for now, centered is good for me.

I can bring these points around like so, and I know that's going to work in exactly the right place for me. If I just change the color of the type momentarily, because the other thing I can do, the baseline at the moment is moving the text to the outside, but if I drag this downwards, you can see now it's on the inside of the path. It's partially obscured by the device in front of it there, but I'm sure you can see it's now on the inside of the path, and sometimes you want to do that also.

I'll just undo there additionally. There are some options for type on a path. If you go to the Type menu and go to Type on a Path, it only becomes active when you have type on a path. You can change the way the type is drawn on the path. If I go to Gravity, for example, that's pretty much working the same way it does. If I go here to Skew, then that can change the characters as they skew around there, and if I go to 3D Ribbon, then they'll change like so, and there you go, and Stair Step basically keeps the baselines flat against the path, just there.

I'm just going to change this back to Rainbow, which is the default, going nice and round in a rainbow. Okay, now I've done that. I can change the color of that, select those things and group them just by clicking Group here in the Quick Actions section. Makes things like that almost as quick as using the keyboard, and now if I just put that into place, now we're ready to move on to an exciting new development in Illustrator 2018 release, and that's SVG fonts.