- [Voiceover] In this movie, I'll show you how
to combine the effects of different
pathfinder operations, specifically the shape modes
that we've seen so far, inside a single compound shape.
And that will allow us to take what is mostly a
collection of ellipses and rectangles, but we do have
a few ellipses that I reshaped using the wide arrow
tool and will combine them to create
this custom type treatment.
And you can see, if I click on any one of these
path outlines, I select them all and as you can
see up here, on the far left side of the control panel,
this is, indeed, one custom shape.
So let's see how it works.
We'll go ahead and switch to the starter document here.
And rather than selecting every single
one of these shapes up front,
I'm just going to select the C through the L shapes.
These guys right here.
And I've done so by marqueeing with the black arrow tool.
And then, I'll go ahead and alt click,
or option click on any one of the shape modes.
The problem is, which one should I use?
If I alt click or option click on the unite mode,
then it's gonna make it difficult to see the shapes
that are on the inside of the C and the O.
Whereas, if I alt or option click on the minus front
mode, then I'm gonna make a
bunch of shapes invisible here.
There really is no overlap between these paths.
So if I go with intersect, I'm going to lose everything.
So, for my money, the best mode to start with,
and by the way, I'm undoing every single time,
because, you can't really heap one shape mode on
top of another at the onset.
I found that the exclude mode,
if I alt or option clicked on exclude,
I got the best results.
Because, at least, that way,
I can see all of my path outlines.
Alright, now to modify them.
I'll just go ahead and double click on any one
of these sub paths, in order to enter the isolation mode.
And so, I'm going to start things off by adding the
paths that make up the L.
And so, I'll just go ahead and marquee them and you
might think the solution, at this point, notice that
it's telling me that exclude is selected.
So, I should be able to switch to a different mode,
and so you might think that the solution is to
just click on the unite icon.
But if you do so,
you're gonna get an error message.
Because, essentially what Illustrator is trying to do
is actually redraw the paths and it can't do so inside
the confines of a compound shape.
So, just go ahead and click okay
and instead of clicking that icon.
Go ahead and once again press the alt key
or the option key on the mac and click on it.
And that will give you the effect you are looking for.
Alright, now to take care of the C.
I'll go ahead and click on this big rectangle here,
and shift click on this internal ellipse and, of course,
I want to subtract them.
So I'll switch over to minus front,
but instead of clicking on it,
I will alt or option click on it, like so.
And, at this point, you can see that exclude is
working just fine for the interior of the O.
So I am more or less done.
But let's say, I want to change the fill,
and I also want to change
the stroke so that it's not a mitered joint,
like we're seeing down here at the bottom of the C.
So, I'll just go ahead and select any sub path.
It doesn't matter which one.
And I'll click on the fill swatch,
up here in the control panel.
And I'll change it to this light green right here.
And notice, that changes the fill of all of the letters
that are inside of this compound shape.
And that's because, just as with the compound path,
a compound shape can only have one,
and only one, combination of fill and stroke attributes.
Alright, now I'll go ahead and click on that
second color swatch to change the fill and I'll
go with deep green this time around.
And then I'll click on the word stroke to
bring up the stroke sub panel.
And I'm going to take the line
away down to three points.
And then I'm going to set the cap to round cap and
I'm going to click on the round join icon as well.
And then, the safest thing to do at this point,
is to just go ahead and click
off the panel to hide it.
Alright, now, assuming that I'm done,
which it appears that I am,
I'll just go ahead and press the escape key in order to
escape out of the isolation mode.
And then I'll click in the
background to deselect that ellipse.
And that is how you combine the effects of
multiple pathfinder operations,
specifically shape modes,
inside the confines of the single compound shape
here inside Illustrator.