Orkron Studios

I wanted to write out a quick tutorial on how to create dynamic pattern text using Illustrator CS3.

This will really just cover how to add a pattern to the text, without much fuss or sweat; I did notice that the pattern I chose turned out to not work great in this instance, so be careful on the pattern you choose beforehand to make sure it will tile well (within text).

Okay, let’s get started: First off head over to a really kool site Patternwall.com to find a good tilable pattern.

Patternwall has a really neat system for picking a pattern, simply click on a swatch to see it tiled:

and click the download text to download the pattern you want; I chose to open this JPG file with Illustrator since that’s where we’re going to using it.

So this is your swatch opened in Illustrator – some swatches from Patternwall.com are bigger than others.

So at this point we want to convert this rasterized, 72 dpi image into a vector image with points/paths etc. We are going to use the Live Trace function to achieve this, but before you go hitting the “Live Trace” button on your toolbar there, we need to approach it from a better angle:
With the pattern image selected, click on Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options:

And you get a dialog box that pops up like so:

Choose “color” as the mode, and the default of 6 colors is fine; if you check the “preview” box you will see the output results on your screen – this is very handy when playing with something and not knowing the best results beforehand.

When you see the results you like, hit the “Trace” button in the box; the dialog box will disappear and you will be back on the main stage of Illy. Close to the upper-right of the toolbar has a button labeled “expand”. while the traced object is still selected, click on Expand.

Now open your Swatches palette by clicking on Window -> Swatches if it’s not already open.

Drag the expanded object from the stage into the Swatches pallet. This makes a swatch from the selected artwork.

Now start with a blank document – we’re going to type out some text.

Once you have your text, keep it selected and make sure the “fill” not the stroke is selected on the main toolbar. Then click on the pattern we created in the Swatches pallet.

The pattern is applied to the Fill of the text, but the first result isn’t ideal. We are going to transform the pattern inside the text to find a better fit.

Open the Transform dialog box by clicking on Window -> Transform.

For this step we want to make sure we transform only the pattern and not the object. In the upper-right corner of the Transform box there is an icon that looks like 3 lines and a downward-pointing triangle. Click this and choose from the dropdown menu “Transform Pattern Only”

You can play with the numbers until you get a result you like.

Adding a stroke to the outside of the text will help it stand out from any background you may be using.

I wasn’t too thrilled with the pattern at the very end so decided to try another pattern from Patternwall; here is the final result:

There is a lot you can do with this feature, and the text is completely editable so can be changed to read whatever you like. I hope you found this useful.

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