Typographically Correct Stroke

// Introduction

This quick tutorial shows you how to add typographically correct strokes to your Type avoiding stacking problems. If you ever added strokes to your Type in Adobe® Illustrator® you know that it just doesn’t look good:

Even a normal weight stroke covers the letter forms making it look absolutely awful! Is there anything we can do about it? Yes - take a look at these few easy steps.

// New Document

Launch Adobe® Illustrator® and start with the new document, let’s say 700 x 980 px, units: Pixels, RGB color model, 72ppi:

// Letters

Start with Type Tool. Insert a simple, two line text. I use Proxima Nova Black Font, 150pt height.

// Style and Color Appearance

I will modify the second line text style applying for example PlayBall font, 81.25pt height.

Of course I can even apply different color appearance to my letter lines, like this:

// Characters leading

To make it more like one assembly text we will change the Leading parameter as well. Just select the second line of text, go to Character panel and type 16.5pt

// Apply Strokes to your Type

The letter forms are ready – let’s start with the Stroke. Go to Appearance panel, hit Add New Stroke button and change its weight to 25px.

It doesn’t look good. So now, drag the Stroke entry and drop it below the Characters.

appearance panel drag stroke below the characters line

appearance panel apply new stroke weight

And that’s it! The Stroke effect is ready and looks great! One more thing: click on the Stroke link and change its corner type to Round Join. The result should be like this:

// Modifying the Text Content

Note that we are still working with the fully functional Type Object. Any modification to its content is still possible. We can change anything inside our Type and Adobe® Illustrator® will recalculate the whole structure fully automatically. Take a look at these examples:

Obviously we can also modify the Font Style of our letters. I will select just the colon character and modify its Style to Proxima Nova Black:

I can also modify other attributes, like for example Leading. I will adjust the second line a little bit by selecting the horse line and entering 18pt in the Character panel:

// The final effect preview

OK. Our :gentle horse: typography is ready. This was simple like ABC! And we still have it in the Type form - so any further modification will be really smooth.

multi styled multi colored text as one Type Object

multi styled multi colored text as one Type Object Blue

// author: Pawel Kuc