- [Instructor] Illustrator has a number of tools
Here are some examples of the
I need to use very condensed or compressed type.
I'm using a typeface called Balboa Extra Condensed.
but if you don't have it, then just use
a very compressed or condensed typeface.
Now because the scaling options within
the 3D map art environment leave something to be desired
we need to do as much of the heavy lifting as possible
before we make our type into a symbol
I actually want to make the stroke color none,
the letters are that much narrower than the other two,
It is possible to keep your type as live type,
because it's going to be easier to place it on the cube.
So I'll select all three pieces
of type and choose create outlines.
Now one by one I'm going to select the piece of artwork
and drag it onto the symbols panel
and good housekeeping dictates that I name the symbol.
And now I'm going to go to my next empty art board
and it is here that I'll create the artwork.
So I'm going to create a rectangle at 100 by 100 millimeters,
apply a light gray fill to that,
then come to the Effect menu, 3D Extrude and Bevel.
Turn on the preview, I want the position
in this case to me isometric left.
And the extrude depth needs to be the same
as the width and height which is 100 millimeters.
Then click on Map Art and I'm just going to
I'm actually going to leave this dialog box so that I can
reposition these things so that we can see them better.
So I'll just click okay to that
and then pan my screen over to the left
and then we'll revisit that effect
through the appearance panel.
Turn the preview back on.
Come and click on Map Art.
We have six surfaces for our cube,
and we know which one we're dealing with by the red outline.
So for surface number one,
I'm going to come and add this symbol.
Now because we created the type,
converted to outlines within a 100 millimeter square,
I can now click on scale to fit
and it's going to fit that surface exactly.
I'll now move onto surface number three.
Ah, the only problem is though,
let me just come back, I need to rotate it,
so I'm going to rotate it like so.
Now coming to surface number three,
I'll add my third symbol, scale to fit,
and move to the corner and rotate.
Hold down the shift key as you do this
so that you can constrain the rotation.
And then surface number six which will be
at the second symbol, scale to fit, and rotate.
Now because I want the letters to be on an invisible cube
rather than one that has shading,
I'll check this option, Invisible Geometry.
Now that is the result, there's one small problem with this.
We have a gap right here, let's see how we can fix that.
I'm going to come to my symbols.
These are editable symbols and any changes
we make to them will update the artwork.
So I'll click on Edit Symbol, and we'll zoom in on that.
Now when I draw myself a guide,
to the leftmost edge of this Z we see that
up here the top crossbar is slightly to the right of that,
and this is the cause of the problem.
So I'm going to come and choose my direct selection tool
and we're going to make a small adjustment to this.
I'll just grab that path segment, holding down the shift key
and pull it out to the guide.
I'll now exit the symbol editing mode,
and when we come to our artwork
we hope that is has updated.
Now if it hasn't updated, we select the artwork
and we revisit the effect, turn on the preview
where we see that it actually now has updated.
So it just needed a little bit
of a nudge from us to do that.
So that's how we can create type around a cube.