From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

970 Aligning to point type in Illustrator

From the course: Deke's Techniques (2018-2021)

970 Aligning to point type in Illustrator

- Hey, gang. This is Deke McClellan. Welcome to "Deke's Techniques." Today we're inside my favorite vector-based drawing program, Adobe Illustrator, in which I'll show you how to align graphic objects to point type. That is display type that aligns to a tiny one dimensional point. This is new behavior, by the way. As things stand now, it's turned off by default, which doesn't make any sense to me. But hey, I'm just a tiny one dimensional video trainer, which is why I'm going to show you not only how to turn on this very helpful feature, but also exactly how it works. All right, let's see how graphic objects have aligned to text objects in previous versions of Illustrator. This is the way it still works by default inside Illustrator 2021 and moving forward. I'll go ahead and click on this type to select it. Then I'll Shift + click on this dashed line right here. Now let's say I want to align that line to the top of the text. Well then I need to establish the text as the key object by clicking on it once again, and you can see that it lights up and then you can take advantage of either the align options here in the properties panel or up here in the horizontal control panel. I'll click on this guy, Vertical Align Top, and you can see that the line moves upward but it's way above the text. All right, now I'll select this solid line right here and I'll Shift + click on the type and then I'll click on it again. And so in case you're not familiar with this behavior, you don't Shift + click a second time or double-click, you just go ahead and click on the selected object in order to make it the key object so it doesn't move. And then once again, I'll go up here to the control panel and I'll click on Vertical Align Bottom. That does move the line upward ever so slightly but it doesn't move it all the way to the letters. Why in the world is that? Well, I can't argue for the reasoning, but I can tell you what's going on. I'll click off the text to select it and then I'll click on it again so just the text object is active. Notice that this is point text as indicated by this point at the center of the type. So the text is centered on that point. At which point, I'll go up to the View menu and choose Show Bounding Box. Your bounding box may already be on but I had mine off so we can better see what's going on. But notice once I turn on the bounding box, that's our culprit. Illustrator is aligning the graphic object to the bounding box as opposed to the text itself. Especially where text is concerned, the bounding box is a mercurial creature. It's very difficult to predict. I can't imagine a reason on Earth you would want to do this, which is why it's at least helpful that you can change this behavior in the most recent version of the software. I'll just go ahead and Shift + click on this top line up here. I'm also going to turn off the bounding box because it's not only distracting, it's also fairly useless where point type is concerned. All right, now what you want to do, here inside the properties panel is click on this ellipsis associated with the align options and then you click on this fly out menu icon and drop down to Align to Glyph Bounds. Now what if you're not a big fan of the properties panel? Why then what you'll need to do. I'll just go ahead and escape out of there. Is bring up the Align panel by going up to the Window menu and choosing Align and then click on its fly out menu icon, choose Align to Glyph Bounds. Either way, because this is point text, you want to turn on the point text option, which makes Illustrator smarter. All right, I'll just go ahead and close the Align panel and now I'll show you if I click once again on the text in order to set it as the key object and then I click on that same icon, Vertical Align Top, notice that moves the line so it aligns to the top of the characters. Same goes if I select the text object and then Shift + click on the bottom line here, and then click on the text object once again to set it as the key object, and now I'll go up to this icon, Vertical Align Bottom, and that will align the graphic object to the bottom most letter form, which in our case happens to be the Y. I'll show you what I mean. Just go ahead and zoom in on this object like so, and I'll click off so that we can see that we've aligned exactly to the bottom of this lower case Y, whereas at least where this text is concerned and it happens to be set in Source Serif, by the way, the bottom of the P is higher. So we're not aligning to it. Always aligning to the bottom most letter form, by the way. Then if I move over here, we'll see that I'm not really in alignment with the G either. All right, I'm going to make sure everything's deselected and press Control + zero or Command + zero on the Mac in order to center my zoom. Oh, and I should show you. This works for horizontal alignment as well. So I'll press Control + A or Command + A on the Mac to select everything. I'll click on the text to establish it as the key object. Notice that these points are way over here on the left-hand side. If I were to click on this guy, Horizontal Align Left, then the lines are going to move over so that they align to the left edge of the left most letter form, which happens to be this loop right here of the lowercase G. If I were to press Control + A or Command + A on the Mac to select everything once again, click on the text to make it a key object and then notice these lines are far to the right of the right most edge of the right most letter form, which is this lower case Y. But as soon as I click on this option, Horizontal Align Right, I get precise alignment as we're seeing right here. So once again, you're always going to align to the outer most edge of the outer most letter form. That's how you align to letter forms or if you prefer glyphs, the way it should've been done since the very first version of the software, here inside the most recent version of Adobe Illustrator. If you're a member of LinkedIn Learning, I have a follow-up movie in which I show you how to align a graphic object to two dimensional area type. If you're looking forward to next week, we're still inside Illustrator, in which I'll show you the more impressive feat of snapping a graphic object to a letter form. That's what Adobe used to call it anyways. Nowadays, Adobe prefers the term glyph, which is not accurate. Strictly speaking, the glyph is the character. The letter form is the character outline. But why split hairs? Oh, that's right. Because hairs matter. "Deke's Techniques." Each and every week. Keep watching.

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