- [Instructor] In this movie,
I'll show you how to create text along a path outline.
Specifically, we'll create text along the top
and the bottom of an ellipse.
I'll go ahead and switch over to my starter document
and notice here inside the Layers panel,
that we have a hidden layer called big ellipse.
If you're working along with me,
go ahead and turn the layer on
and notice if I select the ellipse,
that it has no fill, but it has a black stroke.
That stroke is going to disappear
as soon as we attach the text.
Alright, now we need to separate
the top and bottom of the ellipse,
and the best way to do that
is with the white arrow tool,
which you can get by pressing the A key.
Next you want to draw a tiny marquee
around the bottom anchor point.
Taking care, not to select the tin woodman or the scarecrow,
and that'll select that point,
along with its two neighboring segments,
and then you want to press Control + X
or Command + X on the Mac,
in order to cut it to the clipboard,
and then press Control + F,
or Command + F on the Mac to paste it in front,
and you can see by the anchor points,
that the bottom of the ellipse
is now separated from the top.
To make that more obvious,
I'm going to scoot the bottom down
by pressing Shift + down arrow,
one, two, three times,
which will scoot that bottom of the ellipse down 30 points.
Alright, now I'll click off the ellipse to deselect it.
The next step is to select the type tool,
which you can get by pressing the T key.
Alright now, I want to better see what I'm doing,
so I'll increase the type size
by clicking on the word Character,
up here in the Control panel
and then, I'll click on the down-pointing arrowhead
associated with the type size value
and I'll change it to 36 points
and then I'll press the escape key
in order to hide that panel.
Now notice, if I hover my cursor over a path outline
that it changes to an eye beam
with a dotted path running through it,
at which point you can click
in order to create some placeholder text along your path.
Now, this placeholder text can be useful
when you're putting together comps,
in which case, you don't always know
the specific text you'll be using.
In my case, I do know the text that I want,
So I'll just enter it, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
and then I'll press the escape key
in order to accept that change
and return to the black arrow tool.
Alright, now we want to assign a few formatting attributes,
starting with an even larger type size,
and so, I'll go ahead and select the size value,
up there in the Control panel,
and I'll change it to a whopping 94 points
and I'll press the enter key
or the return key, on the Mac, to accept that change.
We want our text to be centered along the path outline,
so go ahead and click on the align center icon,
to the right of the word, Paragraph,
and as you can see here,
that doesn't really end up working out very well for us.
We'll solve that problem in just a moment.
Alright, now I want to search for a condensed font
that's installed on my system.
So, I'll click inside the font option
and I'll enter the word, condensed,
and let's say I want it to be bold as well,
I'll just add the word, bold,
and even though as you can see here,
the style names actually appear in the order bold condensed.
It's totally okay if you enter then in a different order.
Alright, now I'm going to scroll down my list
using the scroll wheel on my mouse
and I'll eventually select this font here,
Nueva Standard Bold Condensed.
It's very likely you don't have that font on your system,
in which case, just go ahead and select something else.
Alright now, this version of Illustrator
brings back the bounding box anytime you change the font.
That's just going to get in our way.
So, I'll go up to the View menu
and choose Hide Bounding Box
or press Control + Shift + B
or Command + Shift + B on the Mac,
and then finally, I'll click on the word, Character,
and I'll click this down-pointing arrowhead
that's associated with the kerning value
and I'll change it from Auto to Optical,
which is going to work better for this large display text
and then I'll press the escape key to hide that panel.
Now, notice right here that we're seeing a red plus sign,
which tells us that we have overflow text,
text that doesn't quite fit along the path outline.
Also, notice that we've got this perpendicular bar
near the center of the text.
In my case, it appears in the middle of the F in Wonderful.
You can drag that item right there, back and forth
in order to move the text along the path outline,
or you can drag it to the other side
in order to flip the text, like so,
and if that happens to you accidentally,
don't worry about it, you can just flip it back
by dragging that bar, once again, to the other side.
What we need to do, however,
is move these end bars right here,
and by bars, I mean these perpendicular lines
along the path,
and so, instead of dragging on the plus sign itself,
you need to move your cursor,
until it appears as an arrowhead
with an arrow bar next to it,
and then drag that guy down until it snaps to the endpoint.
That doesn't really solve the problem, however.
As you can see, the text is centered over here
on the right hand side of the path
and that's because this bar,
which indicates the beginning of the text
is not aligned properly.
So, move your cursor until you see
that little perpendicular arrow
and then drag that bar all the way to the endpoint, like so,
and you'll end up with this perfectly centered text.
Alright, now I'll just go ahead
and click off the text to deselect it.
Next, we want to paste some text
along the bottom ellipse
and we're going to do that
by switching to that final version of Chapter Five
and then, I'll click on the byline text to select it
and I'll just press Control + C
or Command + C on the Mac,
in order to copy it.
Now I'll go ahead and switch back
to the document in progress
and I'll once again, select the type tool,
and I want you to notice here
if you click and hold,
there is this thing called the Type on a Path Tool,
you just don't need it.
The type tool, by itself, does everything
and so I'll go ahead and select the type tool,
move my cursor down here,
to really any old point, once again,
click on the path outline,
in order to add that placeholder text,
this time set in Nueva Standard Bold Condensed,
and now I'll just go ahead and paste the byline
by pressing Control + V
or Command + V on the Mac.
Alright, now we want to adjust the formatting a little bit
and so, I'm going to press Control +
or Command + on the Mac, to zoom in,
which zooms in on the wrong portion of the image.
So I'll scroll my document
by pressing and holding the Alt key
or the Option key on the Mac
because after all, we have some active text,
and then I'll just go ahead and drag the document upward.
Alright, now I'll press Control + A
or Command + A on the Mac,
to select all of that text
and I'll change its style from Italic to Regular,
up here in the Control panel
and then I want to increase the type size a little bit
using that keyboard shortcut of Control + Shift + >,
that's Command + Shift + > on the Mac,
and if you're working along with me,
you want to press that shortcut
a total of three times, like so,
and then, press the escape key
in order to accept that change
and switch back to the black arrow tool.
Alright, this guy isn't aligned properly,
so let's go ahead and drag this bar right here
until it snaps to the endpoint like so,
and then we're going to have to drag this one
quite a bit farther.
So, I'll just go ahead and get it started, like so,
and then, I'll scroll over to the right
and drag it all the rest of the way
until I once again see that snap cursor,
and then finally,
notice that our text is on the wrong side
of the path outline.
We can fix that by dragging this bar, this central bar,
upward, like so,
and that finishes off the effect,
at which point, I'll once again,
click off the text to deselect it
and then I'll zoom out by pressing Control + 0
or Command + 0 on the Mac,
and that, friends, is how you create text
along any path outline,
whether it starts off as an ellipse
or any other shape, here inside Illustrator.