Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

Placing Type on a Path

While point and area text are probably the most common ways to

handle text in Illustrator, there’s a third kind: text on a path. Text

on a path allows you to wrap a line of text around any shape you

can create in Illustrator. To help demonstrate type on a path, I’ve

created a document that features a guest appearance by Professor

Shenbop, an entirely fi ctitious (and sadly dead) frog that rose to

fame in the Adobe InDesign One-on-One books. (Check out InDe-

sign CS4 One-on-One for more of Shenbop’s story.)

1.

Open the Shenbop artwork. Inside the Lesson 04 folder

you’ll fi nd a fi le called Shenbop.ai, seen in Figure 4-33

This document was rebuilt in Illustrator, based on

Shenbop’s fi rst appearance in the InDesign book. (The docu-

ment has three layers, two of which are locked, because you

won’t need to edit them for this exercise.) Note the type placed

outside the artboard; this is the type you’ll be adding to the

circular paths.

2. Cut the fi rst line of text. With the black arrow tool, click the

line Professor Shenbop’s to select it. Press Ctrl+X (-X) to cut

the text and move it to the clipboard.

3.

Paste the text on the upper path. Switch to the type tool,

and move the cursor over the red circular path, just above

the three o’clock position. (The red circle is actually two

separate paths. I already split the path horizontally for

you using the scissors tool, using the method you saw in

“Splitting, Joining, and Aligning” in Lesson 2.) Your cur-

sor should change to look like , as shown in Figure 4-34.

Click to convert the path to allow type, and press Ctrl+V

(-V) to paste the text.

When you click on a path with the type tool, Illustrator

automatically removes the stroke from the path, rendering the

path itself invisible. Paths with type can have only stroke or fi ll

attributes on the type, not on the paths.

4.

Adjust the indents and the fl ip. Switch back to the black

arrow tool. You’ll see blue guides appear perpendicular to

the path itself, which is also shown in blue—all pictured

in Figure 4-35. As you mouse over these guides, your cur-

sor will change to look like , , or . The fi rst two ar-

rows allow you to adjust the left and right margins of the

type on the path; drag these guides to the far ends of the

Figure 4-33 .

Figure 4-34 .

Figure 4-35 .

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Placing Type on a Path