Add curved text to finish a poster

With Adobe Illustrator there are a lot of ways to be creative with your text.

In this tutorial, you'll finish a poster by adding text to a shape called warping as well as adding text along a path.

You'll start by warping a headline to give it some personality.

So, select the text with the Selection Tool.

Now to warp it, choose Object, Envelope Distort... and you'll see that there are three options in this menu.

Make with Warp... which is what you'll use to warp the text using shapes that come with Illustrator.

Make with Mesh... which applies a mesh you define to the text, so that you can edit parts of the text and Make with Top Object... that uses a shape you create on top of the text to warp the text into.

Choose Make with Warp...

In the dialog box that opens, you've got a lot of creative options and shapes to choose from.

To see how they work, make sure Preview is selected, then you can experiment by choosing a different style.

Make sure to choose Arc Lower to go for the effect for this particular poster.

You can also choose to bend it in either a Horizontal or a Vertical orientation.

Make sure Horizontal is chosen.

You can also choose how much to bend the shape and text.

Make sure you have it set to around -20% or so for this example.

You can then distort the text in different ways. horizontally or vertically.

Before you move on, make sure these are set to 0% and click OK.

The text is put into a shape that Illustrator creates.

Together they are a special type of group called an Envelope warp.

You can see that up here.

Now when selected, you can edit the shape that the text is in using Transform Tools.

For instance, drag the bottom point here down to make the shape taller.

When you release, the text is now fit within the taller shape.

You can still edit the text if you want to.

To do that come up here to the Properties panel and click the Edit Contents button.

You can now see the text box instead of the warp shape.

To edit the text, press the letter T, so you can select the Type Tool. you can then change the text or formatting.

I'll change the text to FOLK FEST.

There.

Now to stop editing the text, select the Selection Tool.

And to edit the shape again, click the Edit Envelope button you see up here.

The text is in a shape like contents in an envelope.

Drag it into place and you've got it.

Now let's curve some text here by adding it to a path you'll create.

And we want the curve of the path that the text will follow to closely match the curve you see here.

To do that, you can draw it with the Curvature Tool.

So, select the Curvature Tool over here.

Start your path right about here by clicking and releasing.

Now to make sure that the curve follows the bottom of the text, click right about here, it doesn't have to be perfect.

Then to finish the path, click here.

There.

Now to move the path down, select the Selection Tool by pressing the letter V and drag it down here.

The text will sit above the path, so you're giving it some room right now.

Now to add text to the path, select the Type Tool by pressing the letter T.

You can click anywhere on the path to see where the text starts.

So, come to the beginning, so it's easier to align the text to the center of the path later.

When the pointer looks like this, click to add some placeholder text.

Now to change the text, so we can more easily see it, come over to the right and change the font Size to something bigger.

And then change the Fill color.

And press the Escape key to hide the colors.

Now you can replace the placeholder text.

So, type A CELEBRATION OF MUSIC, ART, AND FOOD There.

To align the text in the center of the path, come over to the Properties panel and click the Align Center button here.

Now there are some options you can set with type in a path like how the text aligns to the path and other things.

To select the whole path, press the Escape key.

And to access these options, Choose type, Type on a Path, Type on a Path Options...

In the dialog box that appears make sure you select Preview, so you can see the changes happen.

You can apply an effect to the text to make it look different.

That looks good.

Or you can align the text vertically to the path in different ways.

You can even change the spacing of the letters.

If you had the text on a sharp curve or an angle, you'd want to make the value higher to remove extra space from between the characters.

Click OK, and you've created your curved text.

Curving or warping text are just a few of the many ways you can be creative with your text in Illustrator.

Try incorporating what you just learned to make your text stand out.