- [Instructor] In this movie, I'll show you how
to work with the Touch Type Tool,
which allows you to scale, rotate,
and move individual characters
of type just by dragging on them.
Now, before we select the tool,
I want you to go up to the view menu
and make sure that your smart guides are turned on.
That way you'll be able to get real-time information
in the form of heads up displays.
Now, the thing about having smart guides turned on,
is that it forces your cursor
to highlight the text underneath it.
And so the reason that my text is turning red is
because red is the color assigned to this type layer.
So that's just something we'll have to adapt to.
All right, to get to the Touch Type tool
you want to click and hold on the standard type tool,
and then select the Touch Type tool from the flyout menu.
Notice that you also have a default keyboard shortcut
of Shift + T, and notice, as soon
as I select the tool, Illustrator invites me
to click on a character to select it.
So I'll go ahead and click on the letter X,
at which point you can see a bunch
of handles surrounding the letter.
Now, if you drag this top left handle,
then you are going to adjust the vertical scale,
as indicated by this V-Scale value in the heads up display.
In my case, it's currently 114.22%.
But it's going to change on the fly.
If you want to change the horizontal scale
then you drag this bottom right handle.
And if you want to change both values
then you drag this top right handle.
And notice that's affecting both
of the values proportionately.
Which is not to say they match each other,
they are just maintaining the proportions
that I've assigned so far.
Now, notice this handle above the bounding box.
If you drag it, then you are going
to rotate the character independently of the others.
And then, if you either drag inside the bounding box,
or if you drag this bottom left handle.
Then you're going to move the character,
and you're going to see the movement represented
by this baseline shift value.
But we are changing the kerning of the letter as well
because otherwise we couldn't get this horizontal movement,
we could only get the vertical movement.
And I'll tell you more about that in just a moment.
But for now, I'm going to click on the Y to select it.
And I want you to see down below this kind
of blue region here we have an alternate character,
which in this case is a lowercase Y.
Now, to see what's going on there,
I'll go to the window menu,
I'll choose type, and then I'll choose character.
Or I could just press Control + T, or Command + T
on the Mac to bring up the character panel.
Notice that I currently have all caps turned on,
but if I were to click on this lowercase Y,
then all caps gets turned off.
All right, now I want you to notice these various values.
Both the scale values, both vertical scale
and horizontal scale are set to 100%.
Our baseline shift is zero,
and this character rotation value is zero as well.
Notice what happens if I drag this guy upward.
I can see that the baseline shift is going to be 62 points.
And sure enough, that's reflected
by the baseline shift value.
But I was also able to move the Y closer to the X
so that that point right there in the bottom-right corner
of the X is fitting in the crook of the Y.
So what in the world's going on?
Well, I'll go ahead and switch back
to the standard type tool, which of course
you can get by pressing the T key.
And I'll click right here, and I want you
to see how the kerning value, which we're not able
to see on the fly, is now -156.
So I've tightened up the kerning dramatically.
And to make this even more clear, I'll click after the Y.
Between the Y and the Z right there,
notice that the kerning value is zero.
But see what happens if I switch back to my Touch Type tool.
And I click on the Z, and I'll go ahead and rotate it.
And I might make it taller as well.
If for no other reason than
because I can get to this one handle.
And now I'll drag this guy over and up,
at which point you can see that baseline shift value
on the fly in the heads up display.
It's telling me it's going to be 35 points,
and sure enough it's showing up
as 35 points here inside the character panel.
I've also modified the vertical scale.
The horizontal scale value remains 100%,
but I have rotated the character more than 10 degrees.
But I'm not seeing a kerning value.
To see that value I have to press the T key
to switch back to the type tool,
and click between the Y and the Z.
Now, at this point I'm not seeing
the blinking insertion marker.
So I'm just going to press the left arrow key
to move it between the X and the Y,
at which point I can see a kerning value of -156.
And bear in mind that value is
in thousandths of an em space.
And then, if I press the right arrow key
in order to advance the blinking insertion marker
between the Y and the Z it's not much different, it's -157.
However, it's much different than it was
just a moment ago when it was zero.
So bear in mind, when you drag
a character around using the Touch Type tool
you're not just affecting the baseline shift,
you're also affecting the kerning value, and that goes
when dragging the very first character as well.
Notice if I move the blinking insertion marker all the way
to before the X, then I have a kerning value of 20.
If I don't want that, I would need to reset
that value to zero as I've done here.
All right, now I'll go ahead and press the escape key
in order to exit the text entry mode.
I'll click off the text to deselect it,
and I'll go ahead and zoom in as well.
So notice when I hover my cursor over
the text it appears red in keeping with the color
that's assigned to that layer inside the layers panel.
But if I move my cursor away,
then I'm seeing the real fill, which is a gradient.
Now, I don't want my text to be quite this high,
so I'll go ahead and select it and nudge it down
by pressing Shift + Down Arrow a few times like so.
And then I will once again deselect my text.
And that is how you scale, rotate,
and move individual characters of type using
the Touch Type tool here inside Illustrator.