Secret to Easy Multi-Stroked Text with Effects - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial -

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Secret to Easy Multi-Stroked Text with Effects - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood

September 2004

Start by typing in the text preferable using a stout font, then convert it to outlines. Press Control+H to hide the points.

If the letters are too close together, increase the tracking. You may also need to increase the size of the font as well. I've increased the font size to 72 pts.

Apply a Stroke to the lettering. In this step I've decided that 5 pt. is a good value.

Open the Appearance palette. With the text still selected we can see that the stroke is red and has a point value of 5 and that the fill is black.

Select the Stroke layer if it is not selected.

Click on the arrow and select Duplicate Item.

Notice how we have two Stroke layers now.

Without deselecting the Stroke layer, change the weight to 3 pt. Change the color while you're at it.

Duplicate the layer again. Change the stroke weight to 1 pt. Change the color too.

Lastly, duplicate one more time. Changed the weight to .25. Change the color to white.

Here's a close up of the letter.

Let's select the second stroke layer and apply a Transparency of Multiply.

Here's the result of Step 11.

We can increase the size of the first layer and duplicate. Then change the attributes as shown below.

Again, here are the results of Step 13.

Select the red layer again.

Apply a Pencil brush stroke.

Select the yellow stroke layer this time and apply the Galaxy brush stroke to it.

As the turtle in Finding Nemo so eloquently puts it, "This so totally rocks, dude!:"

And finally here is the result. This has all been achieved by merely using the Appearance palette, creating multiple stroke layers, changing the values, and applying brush strokes to a couple of the stroke layers as well.

Note: If we were to continue drawing other items, we'd find that the effect below would follow. To stop the effect replicating itself onto other shapes, click on the arrow and select Reduce to Basic Appearance. You can also create a basic appearance piece and use the Eyedropper tool and click on the effect text to replicate it onto the piece and then turn around, select individual stroke layers and change their appearance and transparency as in the sample below the text shows.

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