- In this movie, I'll show ya how to fit
this line of headline type so that
it exactly fits the width of the margin guide.
So I'll go ahead and switch to my
illustration in progress.
I'll click on this top line of type
and press shift down arrow a couple of times
in order to nudge it down and give myself
a little more room.
I'm gonna start things off with a couple
of very useful keyboard shortcuts
for adjusting the size of your text.
For these to work, your text has
to be selected with the Type Tool.
I'll go ahead and double-click inside
the text, like so, in order to automatically
switch to the Type Tool and position
my blinking insertion marker.
Then I'll select all the type in this text object.
The easiest way to do that is to go
to the Select menu and choose the All command,
or easier still, you can press control a,
or command a on the Mac.
Now let's say I'm not exactly sure
what type size I'm looking for.
I could just click inside of this type size field
and press the up arrow key in order
to increase the type size, or the down arrow key
to reduce it.
I could also press shift along with an arrow key
to move in 10-point increments,
but there's another way of working,
and to take advantage of it, I'll press
the escape key so the type size value's no
longer highlighted, and then I'll press
control shift period,
that's command shift period on the Mac,
to incrementally increase the size of my type.
The reason it's period is because the period key
also features the greater than sign
on an American keyboard.
If you wanna reduce the size of your text,
you press control shift comma, or
command shift comma, which is the same as
control shift or command shift less than sign.
If you wanna move in bigger increments still,
then you can add the alt or option key.
This is the result of pressing control shift alt
greater than sign, or command shift option
greater than sign on the Mac, whereas
this is what happens when you press
control shift, or command shift, less than sign.
However you get there, we wanna end up
increasing the type size until it's 40 points,
as we're seeing up here in the control panel.
Now what I wanna do is take advantage
of a command under the Type menu
called Fit Headline, but currently, it's dimmed,
and that's because it doesn't work with point type.
You have to first convert your text to area type.
You do that by pressing the escape key
in order to escape the text entry mode,
and then you bring back your bounding box
by going to the View menu and choosing
Show Bounding Box, or you can press
control shift b, or command shift b on the Mac.
Now you can go over here to this little widget
and double-click on it, like so, and that
will convert your text to area type,
at which point you can go ahead and make it wider
so that the text frame fits the entire width
of the margin guide.
That still doesn't quite take care of our problem.
Notice here under the Type menu, Fit Headline
is still dimmed, and that's because I need
to perform one more step, which is
to double-click inside the text in order
to automatically switch to the Type Tool,
and then, with just that blinking insertion marker
sitting there and nothing more, go up
to the Type menu and choose the
now-available Fit Headline command.
That will increase the amount of horizontal space
between the letters in order to fit
the width of the margin guide.
Now I'm gonna press the escape key
in order to switch back to my Black Arrow Tool,
and I'm gonna press control shift b,
or command shift b on the Mac, to hide
that bounding box.
Now I wanna change the color of my text.
Color is a character-level formatting attribute,
just like Font and Style and Size and so forth,
but you're not gonna find it here inside
the Character panel.
Instead, you just wanna go ahead and bring up
the Swatches panel, which you can do
by going to the Window menu and choosing
the Swatches command, unless, of course,
it already has a check mark in front of it,
in which case the Swatches panel
is already onscreen.
Notice that I have all these global swatches
that came in along with my text.
I'm gonna get rid of them by selecting
Black 11 right here, and then shift clicking
on Blue to select all the global swatches.
Then to get rid of all of them without a warning,
I'll alt click, or option click, on the little trash icon,
and they will disappear.
Now I'll make sure my Fill is active.
As I can see, it is, in the top left corner
of the Swatches panel, at which point
I'll select this dark shade of red,
which is R193 G39 B45.
That will recolor the text, as we're seeing right here.
Now I wanna further adjust the amount
of horizontal space between my characters.
Notice if I go ahead and zoom in here,
that while the amount of horizontal space
between, let's say, the d and the e in the word
Denslow looks just fine, we have way too much space
between the w and the period.
That's a function of what's known as kerning.
So basically, every single character of type
has its own spacing metrics built in,
but every once in a while, two neighboring characters
don't really go together very well,
in which case, they become a kerning pair
that Illustrator is designed to modify automatically.
But right now, we have the kerning turned off,
and so what you need to do is go ahead
and marquee these top two lines of type,
taking care not to accidentally select
any of the body copy.
Make sure you're not seeing any purple lines,
as I'm seeing when I hover over that text.
Then go up to the Character panel
and notice this option right here.
It's the one that affects the kerning.
You can see right now, it's set to zero,
which means that all kerning pairs
are being ignored.
What you wanna do is click on this
down-pointing arrowhead, and at the very least,
select Auto, which is gonna look up
the kerning information that's built into
each and every font.
You can see, that took care of our spacing problem
quite nicely.
Another option is to go with Optical.
Optical tells Illustrator to automatically evaluate
the shape of each and every character
in a selection and adjust the spacing accordingly.
You may find that it really works wonders
on display type, which is why I'm going
to choose Optical in the case of my selected text.
Then I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
I wanna do one more thing, and that's
to zoom out a little bit so that I can see
more of my text at a time.
Then I'm gonna click on this point text
right here, the one that represents the bylines.
Now I wanna space these characters out
a little more, and so I'll once again click
on the word Character and switch from
the Kerning option to its next-door neighbor,
which is Tracking.
Tracking is essentially kerning
for multiple characters at a time.
So, for example, if I change this Tracking value
to 100, let's say, I'm gonna really space
those characters out from each other,
which is why, in the end, I came up
with a Tracking value of 40, like so.
Now I'm gonna press control zero,
or command zero on a Mac, in order
to zoom out so that I can take in my entire document.
It seems to me that this top line of text
could be spaced a little bit better.
So what I'm gonna do is double-click
inside of it again in order to switch to the Type Tool,
and position that blinking insertion marker.
I'm gonna choose Type, Fit Headline.
You may wonder, well, why are you choosing
that command again, Deke?
Well, the fact is, you mighta see a shift onscreen there.
I have done a better job of filling up
the width of the margin job, and that's because
switching to optical kerning made a difference
in the amount of horizontal space, which means
that it was worth visiting the Fit Headline command
a second time, just to make sure everything's the way
it needs to be, at which point
I'll press the escape key in order
to switch back to the Black Arrow Tool,
and I'll click off my text to deselect it.
That's how you automatically adjust
the amount of horizontal space
between characters of type using a combination
of the Fit Headline command along with
optical kerning here inside Illustrator.