- In this movie, I'll show you how to create your own
custom variable width profile
that will appear in this control panel menu
that you can apply to any path outline
in any document that you like.
So by way of example, let's say I want to create
an infinity symbol that matches this font up here,
Adobe Caslon Pro.
And so believe it or not, Caslon Pro,
just like most fonts, does not include an infinity symbol,
which is why you normally have to resort
to rotating an eight onto its side.
The problem with an eight on its side
is that it looks exactly like a sideways eight.
Compare it with his h over here,
which has these thick vertical stems
and this narrow horizontal shoulder.
The sideways eight meanwhile has thick horizontal elements
and thin vertical elements, which is why what we need to do
is draw our own infinity symbol, as I've done in advance,
and then assign a variable weight stroke to it.
And so I'm going to go ahead and click on this path outline
with the Black Arrow Tool in order to select it.
And that way, I can see its anchor points.
And next, I'll go ahead and select the Width Tool,
which again has a keyboard shortcut of shift + w.
And by the way, don't make the mistake of just pressing
the w key, because that's going to get you a tool
that doesn't even begin with a w, which is the Blend Tool.
All right, so go ahead and select the Width Tool,
and then double-click on this top left anchor point
and change the total width value to 10 pt,
and then press the tab key to make sure that it's being
evenly distributed on both sides, and then click OK.
And you'll now see that the line weight
up in the control panel is 10 pt,
and that again represents the thickest point in the stroke.
All right, now I'll go ahead and double click
on this left-hand point right there,
and I'll change its total width value to 24 pt like so,
and then click OK.
And now we're just going to go back and forth
between those two values.
So I'll click on this bottom anchor point,
change it to 10 pt and press the enter key,
or the return key on the Mac,
at which point you may notice that Illustrator
has helpfully created a bunch of width points for you
over here on the right-hand side of the shape.
Unfortunately, they're not in the right location,
so what you don't want to do is double-click
on one of these anchor points like so
and then enter 10 pt like we've been doing
because you'll end up creating this unfortunate effect here.
In which case, just go ahead and click
on that width point that you don't want
and press the backspace key or the delete key on the Mac
to get rid of it.
All right, now I'll go ahead and hover
over the path outline.
That's very important, by the way,
that you hover over that path outline
in order to see those width points,
and then grab this guy right here that Illustrator
created for you, and drag it down
so it snaps into alignment with the anchor point,
then double-click on it and change that width value to 24.
And then go ahead and grab this guy,
drag him until he snaps into alignment
with the anchor point,
double-click on it, change its width value to 10
and click OK.
And then I'm going to zoom in on the center portion
of the infinity symbol, and notice right there,
we have a width point.
And you may recall, this is that same point
that the arrowheads were pointing to,
and that's because this is the beginning
of the path outline.
And so you always have a width point at this location.
So go ahead and double-click on it
and change its width value to 10,
and then we should see, yes, Illustrator went ahead
and created one for me,
and this one has perpendicular handles.
Notice that.
So these handles here, go down into the right
where these go down into the left.
And that indicates that it affects the other segment,
the one that's crossing.
So go ahead and double-click on it
and change its width value to 24 this time
in order to make it nice and thick.
All right, now we need to zoom out
and check that illustrator has not messed with
the left-hand portion of the shape, which it has
unfortunately.
It went and added the total of three handles.
And to tell which one is good and which one is bad,
just hover over it.
So this one has a width of 10, that's good.
This one has a width of 9.691, that's bad.
So I'll click on it to select it and press the backspace key
or the delete key on the Mac to get rid of it,
and that also gets rid of that lump
that Illustrator created.
Notice this area is really lumpy
thanks to the fact that right next to the width point
that I created, that has a width of 24 points,
we've got one that has a width of 23.944, which is bad.
So I'll go ahead and click on it to select it,
and press the backspace or delete key to get rid of it.
And then this guy right there is wrong too, 10.537.
I never created anything like that, so I'll click on it
and press the backspace key or the delete key on the Mac
to get rid of it.
And then I'll just hover my cursor over the path
to make sure that I'm seeing
three width points on the right,
three over here on the left and two in the middle,
and that's exactly what I want.
At which point, I'll go ahead and press the V key
to switch back to the Black Arrow Tool.
And notice now that we have an infinity symbol
that does not look like a sideways eight.
It looks like it matches the actual stroke weights
of Adobe Caslon Pro.
All right, now let's go ahead and save it off
as a variable width profile.
You can see a preview of the profile up here
in the control panel, but it has not yet been saved.
So just go ahead and click on that option
to bring up this pop-up menu.
And then click on this Add to Profiles icon
and let's go ahead and call this guy Trio,
after this trio of lumps, and then click OK.
All right, now let's test out the profile
and make sure it looks like this line right here
by clicking on a line above it and then, once again,
clicking on the Variable Width Profile options,
scrolling down to the bottom
and clicking on the width profile that we just created.
And at first, it's going to look like it's not working right
but that's because the line width is set to 1 pt,
meaning that at its thickest,
the stroke is just 1 pt wide.
And so if you want to see it properly,
you need to take that line weight up to our desired maximum,
which is 24 points, and then press the enter key
or the return key on the mac, and everything
should look great.
All right, now the thing about width profiles
is that unlike swatches and selections
that you save here in the Select menu,
they are not part of the active document.
Rather, they are global preferences
that transfer automatically between one document
and another.
So if I go ahead and switch documents like so,
then let's say I want to stroke these hills,
I'll go ahead and click on one of the hills
and shift click on the other with my Black Arrow Tool,
and I just need to establish a base stroke here.
So I'll go ahead and change the line weight value to 20 pt,
and press the enter key or the return key on the Mac,
and I will get two uniform strokes as we're seeing here.
And now I'm going to shift click on this green stroke,
which, as you may recall, is 30 pt thick.
And it already has a variable width stroke.
So the profile option up here is going to appear blank.
That's okay, you can override it just by clicking
on that blank field and choosing Trio once again
in order to assign that profile to all three path outlines.
And then if you want the strokes to match
so that we're not seeing this difference
between the green and black down here,
then go ahead and click on the second color swatch
up here in the control panel and select black.
And now, I'll go ahead and press the escape key
in order to hide that panel,
and I'll press ctrl + shift + a or cmd + shift + a
on the Mac to deselect my paths.
And that's how you create your own variable width profile
that you can assign to any path outline
inside of any document that you like.