Very simple text effects with brushes!

[ivan louette]

Applying brushes to letters outlines isn't always the best way to text effects.
This way gives quickly sophisticated and much more neat effects.

a. type the text
b. draw free lines in the middle of each letter

Then apply brushes to these lines!

Advantages of this process:

-you can use any brush and play with line width, pressure profiles, ...,
-you can use it with imported scanned texts
-if you use script fonts, their character will be preserved,
-if you use more classic fonts, you can add the level of freedom and unprecision you want while drawing the lines,
-you can easily modify the width, pressure or other settings for each isolated element, ...

Enjoy,

ivan

[ivan louette]

Applying brushes to letters outlines isn't always the best way to text effects.
This way gives quickly sophisticated and much more neat effects.

a. type the text
b. draw free lines in the middle of each letter

Then apply brushes to these lines!

Advantages of this process:

-you can use any brush and play with line width, pressure profiles, ...,
-you can use it with imported scanned texts
-if you use script fonts, their character will be preserved,
-if you use more classic fonts, you can add the level of freedom and unprecision you want while drawing the lines,
-you can easily modify the width, pressure or other settings for each isolated element, ...

Enjoy,

ivan

[Ross Macintosh]

Great idea Ivan. I had tried applying brushes to the outlines of fonts without much success. This method looks simple enough - I will try it for sure.

I wonder if there are any single stroke fonts out there? If so they would be interesting to try - faster than creating your own freehand lines as Ivan suggests.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[ivan louette]

Hello Ross,

true stroke fonts exists only in Postscript Type3 fonts, which don't work with Adobe Type Manager. That's very sad because there is a world of creativity there!

Here I have used the "feather-o-graph" brush and then I have used the text I had typed before to apply Clipview to the whole.
That give a nicely oriented texture to the text!

Regards,

ivan

[Ross Macintosh]

That's another stroke of brilliance Ivan.

I don't have time to try it right now - I wonder what happens if you add a bevel to your clipviewed text with your brush "fill"?

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[michaelward]

Ivan, would it be OK if I adpated this tip for use as a small tip tutorial on the upcoming Xara-X.com web site?

Just thought I'd ask first...



<img="http://www.cashflowstore.com/temp/sig.gif">

[ivan louette]

If it's O.K. for the responsibles of this forum, it's of course O.K. for me too.

Thank's to ask for it! And with al my wishes. That's all benefits for XaraX and Xara users.

Regards,

ivan

[smorg]

Hey, Ross:

I have never done a search for single-stroke fonts (even if there were any for TTF as Ivan says), but this site has some incredible links. Dolly Design alone has over 5,000 fonts; it saved me when a client sent a logo without the fonts. It's so long, it might take you a while to get through it. Be warned, some of the links are ftp sites.

http://jeff.cs.mcgill.ca/~luc/freefonts.html

Have fun. [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

[smorg]

Try this, Ross:

http://www.typesource.com/Defunct/Acefonts/Index.html