Join Deke McClelland for an in-depth discussion in this video Working with specialty fonts and effects, part of Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Fundamentals.
Over the course of this chapter I want to give you a sense not only for how all the various print options work inside of Illustrator, but also how you go about handing a job off to a print house for commercial reproduction and get the results that you expect. I am looking at a document called Ghost Robot assets.ai. It's found inside the 11_printing folder. And it features a bunch of different variations on this Ghost Robot character that I created specially for my Illustrator One-on-One series. I've been using this character for years. This time I've gone ahead and assembled the character into a multiple Artboard document.
If you switch over to the Artboards panel you'll see that we have five artboards in all, all of which serve a different purpose and are named according to their function. And we will examine what's going on with those artboards in another exercise. But for now I want to address the issue of font. The first two artboards contain all kind of live text. And the text is set in a variety of different fonts. Now all of these fonts are suppose to ship with most of the skews of Creative Suite 5. But there is always a chance that when you open this document on your system you'll end up getting a font warning that tells you that you're missing some fonts.
And they'll have to be substituted with fonts on your system. What I am going to do is I am going to prepare a version of the document that has no fonts whatsoever. And I am going to do that in fact in these videos. And that way you'll be able to open that document on your system without any error messages whatsoever. But before I convert the text I want to go ahead and show you what's going on. So I am going to zoom in here to the first Artboard, so that we can see this angled author name right here. So this is supposed to be the name of the author of the lead article inside of this publication.
And if I click on its baseline to select it with the Black Arrow tool, up here in the Control panel I can see that the font is set to Birch Standard. However, this is no ordinary Birch Standard right here. If I switch over to the Appearance panel, you can see that I've assigned a dynamic effect of Pucker & Bloat. And if I turn that effect off, this is what Birch Standard looks like all by itself. That is of course subject to a white fill and three different strokes as well. Each of the strokes, incidentally, is slightly offset using the Transform effect.
So I've got a combination of Transform effects that are applied to each one of the strokes and then Pucker & Bloat here to the entire text object. And you get to Pucker & Bloat by going to the Effect menu, choosing Distort & Transform and then choosing Pucker & Bloat. And I have to tell you it's amazing what you can do with dynamic effects inside of Illustrator. Bear in mind, by the way, that this effect right here is being applied to live text. So in other words this is still editable text. I can change it using the Type tool, I could replace characters.
I can fix typos and so on. And to just give you a sense of what Pucker & Bloat is doing, I'll go ahead and turn it on. Notice how that changes each and every letterform. I'll go ahead and click on it. So in other words I'm inventing my own custom variation on a font. It's like I can create my own style on the fly. And in this case I've got a Pucker value of -5%. And I say it's a Pucker value because negative values are Pucker, positive values are Bloat. If I turn on the Preview checkbox and then I reduce this value let's say to -10.
Notice the big difference there. I go ahead and increase the curvature of those serifs and those stems and so on inside of my characters. And I can bloat the text as well if want more of a pillowy feel, then I can reverse the effect by getting rid of that negative value and then pressing the Tab key. And you can see I end up with these puffy marshmallow characters instead. So it's just amazing what you can accomplish. And one of the reasons I'm harping on this is because we are going to spend a lot of time looking at dynamic effects and other appearance attributes inside the Advanced and Mastery portions of this series.
And if you've made it this far, nearly 200 movies into the fundamentals portion of this series, then you really owe it to yourself to go all the way through, because the advanced chapters are where we really get down to the awesome features inside of Illustrator. Also note if I go ahead and scroll up here that I set the title of my publication in a font called News Gothic Standard. Of course I've modified that font. I've gone ahead and applied a Warp feature, Bulge specifically. And if you want to check out my settings you can just go ahead and click on Warp Bulge right there, and you'll see that I have a Bend of -7%.
I am going to cancel out of there. And incidentally to get to the Warp features you go to the Effect menu, you choose Warp, and then you choose whatever it is that you want to work with. You can always switch those out later again. We are going to see those in more detail in the advanced and mastery series. Alright, I'll go ahead and escape out of there. And finally down here check out the word Ghost Robot. I am going to go ahead and click on it in order to make it active. I'll zoom in as well. And notice that not only is it set in Adobe Caslon Pro, it's set in the Bold Italic Style.
And this is very important because we have some Swash characters going on here, the G and the R. And you can often access Swash capital letters when you're working with an Italic font, they are almost exclusively associated with Italic Styles. And you get to them, assuming you're working with a modern OpenType Font from the OpenType panel. And to get to that panel you go to the Window menu. You choose Type way at the bottom of the menu, and then you choose OpenType. You also have that keyboard shortcut there of mash your fist T, so Ctrl+Shift+Alt+T, Cmd+Shift+Option+T on the Mac, T for Type of course.
And there is your OpenType panel. And notice that you have all sorts of options for automatically replacing characters. For example, this Fraction icon will automatically replace 1/2 with the pre-built one-half fraction if your font offers such a thing. Anyway, in this case I've gone ahead and turned on Swash. So if I turn it off, notice the G and R are replaced with their standard variations, which are less than exciting of course. I really wanted to highlight the swashbuckling nature of my Ghost Robot.
So I went with the Swash characters. Now not every single capital letter is available as a Swash. To check out what's really available to you with any given font then you go to the Type menu and choose Glyphs. And you may recall that the Glyphs panel allows you to inspect every single character that the typeface offers. I am going to go ahead and hide that panel and zoom back out. So the question at this point becomes, what do I do about all this specialty text? I certainly don't want to lose any of these text effects just because my printer doesn't have the right font.
Imagine, I hand this off for commercial reproduction and my guy says he's got Birch Standard, but then lo and behold it turns out he didn't have it. And not only is this going to print in the wrong typeface, but my specialty effect right there, Pucker & Bloat, is going to go to rack and ruin. It isn't going to look right at all. So what do I do? Well I'll show you how to convert all of this specialty text to path outlines in the next exercise.
Author
Released
5/28/2010- Creating great art using basic tools
- Brushing and building organic artwork
- Scaling and rotating path outlines
- Creating and formatting text
- Drawing articulated paths with the Pen tool
- Combining paths with Pathfinder operations
- Printing and exporting to the web
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
Views
Q: I was not able to locate my saved shortcuts and cannot locate the folder I created to place the preferences into. The Illustrator steps are clear and using the search function I should be able to find the folder, but it cannot be located. How can I find the shortcuts file on a Mac?
A: To search for the shortcuts file on a Mac, press Cmd+F. Then change the option that says "Kind" in the top-left corner to System Files by choosing "Other" and selecting "System Files" from the menu.



Q: The instructions for installing the dekeKeys don't work on my computer (which is running Mac OS X Lion). Is there an update to these?
A: The dekeKeys distributed with this course will still work for Lion. You just need to add them to a slightly different folder than in previous versions of OS X.
Open a new Finder window and choose Go > Go to Folder. Type the following file path exactly as written below. Copying and pasting may result in an error.
~/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS5 Settings/en_US
Move and/or copy/paste the dekeKeys to this folder and follow the rest of the instructions as outlined in the video, "Installing the dekeKeys keyboard shortcuts."
Related Courses
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Illustrator CS5 One-on-One: Advanced
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Deke's Techniques
with Deke McClelland120h 18m Intermediate -
Illustrator: Rethinking the Essentials
with Mordy Golding5h 7m Intermediate
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Introduction
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Remapping OS shortcuts6m 56s
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1. Making a Document
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Managing artboards1m 20s
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The Welcome screen3m 49s
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Creating a new document7m 13s
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Advanced document controls6m 52s
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Auto-arranging artboards3m 42s
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Rulers and artboards6m 40s
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Saving a native AI document7m 25s
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Closing all open documents2m 45s
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2. Navigation and the Workspace
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Using tools to zoom and pan5m 56s
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Scroll wheel tricks2m 13s
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The tabbed-window interface6m 17s
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Closing all but one document3m 30s
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Saving a custom workspace4m 57s
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Hiding the bounding box4m 27s
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Keyboard increments7m 15s
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Cycling between screen modes5m 21s
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3. Opening Documents and Getting Organized
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Opening a document5m 2s
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Introducing Adobe Bridge6m 6s
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File-type associations4m 3s
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Previewing and collecting8m 17s
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4. Basic Line Art
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Everything is anything1m 14s
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Meet the line tools3m 30s
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Saving large layer previews5m 50s
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Creating custom guides5m 31s
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Creating a heart using arcs3m 51s
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Adjusting control handles4m 13s
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Drawing a line segment4m 51s
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Rotate, Fill, and Stack4m 37s
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Drawing a looping spiral4m 41s
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Tracing a template layer5m 1s
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Selecting similar objects3m 32s
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5. Geometric Shapes
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The anatomy of a path1m 41s
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Meet the shape tools3m 32s
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Creating a compound path4m 29s
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Drawing rounded rectangles3m 28s
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Aligning to a key object3m 47s
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The constraint axes4m 11s
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Using the Flare tool5m 32s
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6. Paint, Build, and Transform
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Painting artwork from life1m 21s
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Tracing a photograph2m 41s
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Draw, Move, and Duplicate5m 27s
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Rotating and duplicating6m 1s
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Pressure-sensitive input4m 24s
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Using the Shape Builder tool4m 57s
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Establishing design groups5m 54s
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When to rotate vs. reflect4m 55s
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Simulating beveled edges6m 46s
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7. Swatch, Stroke, and Stacking Order
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The Document Color mode6m 20s
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Introducing the Stroke panel4m 46s
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Cap, Join, and Miter Limit6m 42s
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Managing color swatches4m 55s
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Filling paths inside groups6m 24s
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Adjusting the stacking order7m 44s
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Combining multiple fills5m 29s
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Creating a tile pattern9m 2s
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The new CS5 arrowheads5m 44s
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Creating a callout line7m 1s
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Width tool tips and tricks8m 47s
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8. Working with Type
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Next-generation text1m 19s
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Making a margin guide5m 7s
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Offsetting flush-left text4m 47s
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Placing and threading text6m 18s
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Working with point text7m 10s
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Redefining paragraph styles6m 42s
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Using the Glyphs panel6m 41s
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Spell-checking text4m 24s
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Updating a graphic style5m 43s
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Creating type on a path7m 26s
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Adjusting baseline shift4m 18s
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9. Using the Pen Tool
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Moving and deleting points7m 46s
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Editing a path as you go7m 5s
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Faking a spline curve5m 54s
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Adding corners to a spline7m 15s
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How control handles work10m 17s
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Aligning open paths5m 38s
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Splitting and joining paths8m 51s
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Cusp points and miter limits6m 45s
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Using the Convert Point tool4m 42s
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Stacking clipped paths4m 28s
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10. Pathfinder Operations
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Unite closed, join open4m 46s
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Switching shape modes4m 43s
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Adding to a compound shape5m 32s
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Outline Stroke and Unite3m 37s
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Painting in the foliage5m 23s
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Filling in and erasing away6m 31s
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Painting more precise holes5m 17s
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Adding in rough edges7m 53s
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Contouring roots and limbs8m 56s
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Filling in the limbs4m 19s
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Using the Divide operation5m 46s
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11. Printing a Document
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Converting type to outlines8m 55s
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Setting trim size and bleed6m 22s
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Stroking a placed image4m 54s
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Filling in your bleeds5m 34s
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Troubleshooting weak blacks6m 36s
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The General Print options5m 20s
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Placement, scale, and tiling6m 39s
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Trim and printer marks6m 23s
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Warnings and document raster5m 21s
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12. Exporting to the Web (and Elsewhere)
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Saving a high-contrast GIF7m 18s
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The versatile PNG format6m 33s
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Saving a full-color PNG4m 47s
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Placing an AI Smart Object7m 38s
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Conclusion
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Until next time1m 33s
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Video: Working with specialty fonts and effects