Adobe Illustrator CS5 One-on-One

I’m here to tell you Miedinger and the others did what

they did because the appearance of type can determine

whether or not it gets read. Single letters may be end-

lessly entertaining to us type nerds, but fonts and other

type characteristics take on real meaning when applied

to larger passages of text. By way of example, Figure 4-2

shows each of the typefaces from Figure 4-1 applied to

a full sentence. (Believe it or not, the size speciﬁ cations

are consistent throughout.) Suddenly it becomes evi-

dent just how much a typeface—in addition to color

and other factors—affects our perception of what we

read. Each face infuses a piece of Illustrator art with

its own particular weight, texture, and style, which in

turn affect the appeal and mood of the ﬁ nished piece.

Much as I love graphics, text is the reason most printed

documents (including this one) exist. And that makes

the humble font a vital contributor to your ﬁ nal artwork,

worthy of your attention.

The Mechanics of Type

Illustrator has three basic methods of handling lines of

text: point type, area type, and type on a path. Point

type is the most basic; it creates lines of type anchored

to a single point, and moving that point moves the type

with it. Area type allows you to create a bounding box

(which can be any shape you’d like, though rectangular

is the most common) and ﬂ ow the text automatically

inside the frame, much like in a traditional page layout

program, such as InDesign or QuarkXPress. Lastly, type

on a path allows you to place type along any existing

path, regardless of its shape; you can bend type around

spirals, sharp corners, or gentle arcs.

In addition to the way Illustrator handles the placement

of type, characters and paragraphs can have other for-

matting attributes—such as typeface, size, leading, and

alignment—also known as styles. Not only does Illus-

trator allow you to set these on a case-by-case basis, but

(beginning with CS3) you can create and save speciﬁ c

character and paragraph styles to apply over and over

to your heart’s content.

Figure 4-2 .

Meanwhile

, each of those same fonts applied to a