There are many ways to distort and warp text in Adobe Illustrator.
You can play around with shapes and forms as much as you want. The sky is the limit when it comes to distorting text.
As a graphic designer, warping text is a very important part of my work. Paying attention to how your letters look on an artwork is just as important as the graphic part.
It might be confusing at first and out of reach, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll want to use this feature more and more.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to warp text with the Envelope Distort option from the overhead menu, and another cool effect with the Text Warp Option.
Is there a Warp tool in the side toolbar? Although you get better control over how you distort from the overhead menu. You can warp your outlined texts by holding Shift + R on your keyboard.
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Let’s get started!
Where to start?
Envelope Distort
Start by opening a fresh document in Adobe Illustrator and selecting your preferred size document. There aren’t any specific document size values for this practice tutorial.
Related Article: How to use the Blend Tool in Illustrator
Grab the Type tool, and write the word “WARP”. You can choose any typeface you like. Keep in mind that the font has to be legible because it will be further distorted later.
From the overhead menu, go to Object>Envelope Distort. You’ll see three options: Make with Warp, Make with Mesh, and Make with Top Object.
Let’s start with Make with Warp. There are so many presets to play around with. I’m going to choose Flag.
Use the Bend sliders to change values and distort your text even more.
The flag is a popular preset that many use to add a cool wavy motion effect.
Double-click to change your text at any moment and write something else.
You can bulge your text horizontally and adjust the Bend slider to get your desired shape. Slide to the right to bulge outwards and left to bulge inwards.
Pretty cool! Don’t just place text on your designs, distort them!
Make with Top Object
Do you have another shape in mind that you want to try to warp your text around?
Place a vector shape on your artboard. I chose a heart and with the Type tool, I wrote the word “Heart”.
Select both text and shape. Make sure your shape is positioned on top of your text layer in your Layers panel. You can also do that by right-clicking and choosing Arrange > Bring to Front. If the shape was placed after the text, it should already be on top.
Go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Top Object.
Imagine what more you can do!
Wrapping Text around graphics
Let’s say you have some text that you would like to warp around some text.
I added a dummy text here and placed it behind my graphic.
Select both text and your object, and go to Object > Text Warp > Make. The text is now warped around your graphic. Go to Text Warp Options to control your offset.
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