Offset Fills to overlay on a Pattern - text with Illustrator CS tutorial

Summary: Using Illustrator CS Scribble effect create a pattern. The pattern is applied to the characters of text: a new fill is added to the text:; a Offset effect is applied to the new fill; finally, the text is warped slightly to enhance the final results. To download the Illustrator CS files that contain the objects I created for the top image text. Click to download zipped Illustrator CS file. (506KB)

Offset Fill Patterns continued...

2. Type Creation and Scribble Pattern Fill.
Now it's time to create the text that will have the pattern applied to it.  With the Appearance palette open to support the next steps, select the Type tool from your Toolbox, click on the Artboard and type the text in the font  of your choice.  I used "Charlemagne Std" Bold. Next select the all the characters with the Type tool that are filled in black.  Grizzly Adams in my example.  Now select  from the Appearance palette the Fill attribute, now select the scribble pattern from your Swatches palette.  This is example I selected Swatch 4 in the Swatches palette.

3. Adding the new fill.
Applying  the Offset effect will envelop a portion of the lettering below. size of your canvas.  Select the type object by clicking on it with the Selection tool in Illustrator CS.  I used the Swatch 3 pattern filled "Grizzly Adams" text. Create a new fill by choosing Add New Fill from the Appearance palette menu.  By default the new fill created will be black and will covering  the pattern  that was applied letters. I suggest as this tutorial shows, change the default black to another color, for example light grey as seen below to the right.
 

4. Applying the Offset fill pattern and finally applying the Roughen effect.
To change the default black fill as described at the end of pt. 4  with the text selected double click on the fill swatch at the bottom of the tools palette and change the color to grey. With the text selected the new fill (grey) is highlighted in the Appearance palette as shown on the right.  Now choose Effect>Path>Offset Path, set the following values a shown to the right, i.e. negative (-) 0.015.  Turn on the preview switch to see the results, as seen to the right on at the top with the image text "Grizzly Adams". To add some more variety to the image one can for example apply a Roughen to the type object's fill to distort the edges even more. Select the type object with the selection tool - Shortcut Key (V) To apply the effect choose Effect>Distort & Transform>Roughen. Using the following setting: size .03 in, Absolute switch on, Detail 50/in and Points set to smooth. Make sure the Preview switch is on.  For reference view the image below.

Roughen Effect applied to text object. with switch settings.  Final I want to make the whole text object black. To do this just change the fill from the grey to black and that's it.  Don't forget in order for many of the effects including the Roughten Effect to work it must be applied to a RGB image so Offset Fill Patterns get to convert your image from CMYK to RGB. Select File>Document  Color Mode to make the conversion.

Previous Page...Offset Fill Patterns with Text