- [Instructor] In this movie, I will show you how
to create letter-shaped gradients in Illustrator.
Now you may wonder what I'm talking about.
Well, imagine that I want to take this text right here
and I want to fill it with a gradient like the one
that we created for our emojis back in Chapter 22
of the advanced course in order to create
a cheerful effect like this one here.
Well, the thing about the emoji is
that its face is filled with a radial gradient,
which works great when you're a filling a circle
because after all, a radial gradient is a bunch
of concentric ellipses of color.
Now the only other kind of gradient available to us
in Illustrator is a linear gradient,
like the one across the emoji's forehead.
We don't have anything like letter-shaped gradients.
Now, if this were a different program,
we might be able to express these guys as shape gradients,
but we'd probably have limited success.
So, what is the solution?
Well, I'm about to tell you, but first I need
to share a note about this exercise file.
Notice if I click on the text with the black arrow tool
that it is set in ITC American Typewriter.
Now the reason for this is
we need a font that has rounded contours
in order to pull off this effect.
So, something like Myriad Pro might work,
but not nearly as well.
Now this particular variety of ITC American Typewriter
is a commercial font that's available from Adobe.
You might have it, but there's a good chance you don't.
Now if you're working on the Mac, you do have a version
of American Typewriter available to you.
It comes from Apple in which case
you'd want to switch to that font.
We're looking for the Condensed Style.
You are going to end up with slightly different
character spacing however, and the letters
will probably shrink a little bit.
Now if you're working on a PC,
you might be able to find a free variety
of American Typewriter Condensed out there,
or you can go to the File menu
and choose Browse in Bridge
and then browse your way to the path outline
sub folder inside the 38 Logos folder,
in which case, you will find the same files
in which the editable text has been converted
to path outlines, and so that way,
you can follow along no matter what.
All right, I'm going to click
on the Boomerang icon to return to Illustrator,
and then, I'll switch over to this plain soy file
right here and I'll click on the text
with the black arrow tool to select it.
All right, now you want to go up to the Window menu
and choose the Appearance command
to bring up the Appearance panel.
Double click on the word Characters right there
in order to select the characters with the type tool,
and then, select that black fill
and click the Trash Can icon in order to get rid of it.
And that way, we won't be building fills
on top of each other.
All right, next you want to click on
Type No Appearance up here at the top of the list,
and then, you want to drop down to the
Add New Fill icon in the bottom left corner
of the Appearance panel and click on it.
All right, now let's go ahead and change this fill
to one of these shades of orange
that I've created in advance, specifically Orange Two
is the one we're looking for.
And in case you're wondering how Orange Two is put together,
I will double click on its swatch here in the Swatches panel
and you can see if I switch to HSB
that it has a hue value of 20 degrees,
saturation of 88%, and a brightness value of 77%.
All right, now I want to create another fill,
this time by clicking on the little Page icon
at the bottom of the Appearance panel,
and I'll change it to Orange Three,
which is a brighter shade of orange,
and if you're curious about its HSB values,
it's 25 degrees for hue,
90% for saturation, and 100% for brightness.
All right, now I want to turn this fill
into a kind of gradient and I'm going to do that
by first shrinking it, and so with this new fill selected,
you want to go up to the Effect menu,
choose Path, and choose Offset Path.
And so, if I were to turn on the Preview checkbox,
you can see that a positive offset value is
going to grow the fill.
I want to make it smaller, so I'm going to take
that value down to negative six like so
and just to be safe, you want to set the Joins to Round,
and then click Okay, and you can see that we've now managed
to shrink the brighter orange fill.
All right now I want to nudge it down a little bit
and I'm going to do that by selecting that orange fill
once again and then I'll return to the Effect menu,
choose Distort and Transform,
and choose the Transform command,
or if you loaded D keys,
you've got a short cut of Control E or Command E on the Mac.
Then you want to click in the Vertical Move Value
and take it up to three points
and then turn on the Preview checkbox,
and you can see that scoots the fill down
ever so slightly, and now click Okay.
All right now we want to blur this fill
by once again, clicking on it,
so you have to keep selecting the fill
and then go to the Effect menu,
drop all the way down to blur and choose Gaussian Blur,
and I came up with a radius value of 10 pixels,
which if I turn on the Preview checkbox, it looks like this.
And so notice that we now have a kind of gradient fill
in the shape of each one of the letter forms.
All right now, I'll go ahead and click on that fill
once again to select it and then I'll drop down
to the little Page icon at the bottom of the panel
and click on it and that will duplicate that entire fill,
including all of its effects.
Now I will go ahead and change the color of that fill
to Orange Four, and to see what that looks like,
I'll double click on that color in the Swatches panel.
This time, we have a hue value of 30 degrees,
a saturation of 80%, and a brightness value of 100.
All right, so I'll cancel out of there.
Now we need to modify some of our effects.
Now we're going to leave Gaussian Blur set to 10,
but we're going to modify that offset path value,
so I'll click on the words Offset Path,
and I'll take the offset value down to negative 12 this time
and I'll turn on the Preview checkbox,
and that goes ahead and shrinks that new brighter fill.
At which point, I'll click Okay.
Then I'll click on the word Transform
and I'll take the vertical value up to six points
and turn on the Preview checkbox,
and that goes ahead and nudges that fill downward,
at which point, I'll click Okay again.
And so again, just so you can see the contribution made
by Gaussian Blur, this is without the blur,
and so we've got a very harsh transition right there,
and that's true if we were turn off the
other Gaussian Blur as well,
so notice we're getting a kind of stair-stepping.
So it's as if we're blending between these various fills,
but we don't have many steps.
Whereas, if I turn Gaussian Blur back on,
that goes ahead and distributes the oranges
so we have smoother transitions.
All right, now I want to add one more,
so I'll click on the fill once again
and I'll drop down to the little Page icon
and click on it, and this time,
I will set the fill to Yellow One,
is the name of this color, and it's mostly just yellow,
but notice that it has a hue value of 50 degrees,
saturation and brightness values of 100%,
and I'll click on the word Offset right there,
and I'll take it down to negative 20 this time
and click Okay, and that's going to shrink that
ribbon of yellow right there.
So this is before and this is after.
Then I will click on the word Transform
and I'll take the vertical value up to nine points
and turn on the Preview checkbox,
so you can see how that yellow fill shifts downward,
and I'll click Okay.
We're going to leave Gaussian Blur set to 10,
but this is what things look like
without the Gaussian Blur
and this is how things look with the blur.
All right now, finally for the smoothest transitions,
you want to go up to the Effect menu
and choose Document Raster Effects Settings,
which affects the entire document by the way.
I've already done this in advance.
I changed the resolution from its default of screen 72 ppi,
which is going to make the effects
operate more quickly incidentally,
but it's also going to give us choppier transitions.
If you want super smooth results at the expense of speed,
then you would set resolution to high,
but for our purposes, a resolution of medium is just fine,
at which point, I'll click Okay.
And that is how you create letter-shaped gradients
by amassing a bunch of different solid color fills
and setting them to the Gaussian Blur effect
here inside Illustrator.