Illustrator - Text Wrap Tutorial

As part of this assignment the criteria stated that I would need to use the Text Wrap Tool. This is something which we hadn't covered in lecture and hence was something I went away to research and practise myself. I decided to use the simplest form of text wrap to begin with. This was simply wrapping the text around the image. The image below shows the end result. Please note this image and text was only used as a trial and not anything to do with my final product.

 

At this point it is worth noting that the text was sourced from http://www.lipsum.com/feed/html. This is a site which randomly generates text for this exact person. To try out elements of designs when no text is known. All the text sourced throughout this process is taken from this site. The tutorial where by found out how to achieve this look can be found at: http://tutorialphotoshop.me/rukmlI_pBaY/Text-Wrap-Tutorial-Adobe-Illustrator.

 

So what did I actually do? Well this is pretty simple. I firstly opened an image. In this case an image of the UCP building. I then used the text tool, drew a text box and pasted in my text which I sourced from the above website. The next stage was to add the text wrap. To do this I firstly sent my text to the back of my overall image. I selected the text and then right clicked with my mouse. The arrange tool then allowed me to send this text to the back. Using the Selection Tool I then selected the whole image (both text and UCP building). I then went to the Object menu along the top of the screen followed by Text Wrap. My next step was simply to select Make. This has now wrapped the text around my image.

 

Due to the fact that this was such a simple process I decided to look into this slightly further to explore all my options. In the process of this I came across a second tutorial which can be found here: http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/tutorials/wrapping-text-around-an-image-in-illustrator. This tutorial did show the basic text wrap which can be seen above but also displayed a way which I could wrap my text around the image but leave some space which acts as an outline to the image. Do achieve this I simply went to Object, Text Wrap and the finally Text Wrap Options. I then changed the Offset figure much higher. This increased the spacing between the image and the text. This can be seen below. I exaggerated this effect so it could be seen more clearly here however in terms of my disc design I probably wouldn't offset it this much.

 

 



 

The third Text wrap tool which I played around with involves using the pen or pencil tool to draw around the area you wish to wrap text around. In this example I used a different image. The image I used was a border. This image can be sourced at: http://all-free-download.com/free-vector/vector-floral-border.html. To achieve this text wrap I simply opened my border and then added my text in the same way which was mentioned above. I then used the pencil tool to roughly draw around my floral border. With this selected I then went to the Object, Text Wrap and Make tool in the same way that I did in the first instance. The image below shows the effect this had.

 

Overall these tutorial have shown me aspects of Illustrator which I wasn't aware of previously. They have given me various options with the text wrap which I could use in my assignment.