How to add a stroke line around the outside of text or shapes in Illustrator

Course contents
SECTION: 3
Keyboard Shortcuts 11:05
SECTION: 14
Web UI design 15:17

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Course info

58 lessons / 9 hours 11 projects Certificate of achievement

Overview

Hi there, welcome to this Adobe Illustrator advanced tutorial. 

My name is Dan. I’m an ACI & ACE for Illustrator. 

This course is a more advanced look at Illustrator. It’s not designed for people who are brand new to Illustrator.

This course is for people who can already understand the fundamentals of Illustrator. If you already know what an anchor point is and how to adjust it this course is for you.

This course will speed up your productivity & workflow. It is project based, so you will learn the tools & tricks to create some really beautiful current design styles.

Even if you consider yourself an experienced user, I promise there will be things in here that will blow your Illustrator mind.

You’ll learn advanced anchor point & pen tool tricks. There is a really fun section on mastering lines & strokes. You’ll learn the quick way to take hand drawn sketches and vectorize & color them.

You’ll master depth & perspective in Illustrator, creating semi-flat presentations. We’ll set permanent defaults for fonts, colours & learn how to turn hyphenation off once and for all.

We’ll make beautiful charts & graphs for your indesign documents. There is a colour mastery section where you will learn to make quick colour adjustments, gradients meshs & how to blend it all together.  

Your creativity will be doubled once you finish the transform, distort & blending section of the course.

There is an entire section dedicated to learning how to speed up your personal workflow & how to speed up Illustrator and get it running super fast. 

If you’re ok in Illustrator but you know there is so much more in there to be unlocked then please  join me and become an Illustrator super hero.

Course duration 8 hours + your study.

Get the completed files here
Daniel Scott

Daniel Scott

Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor

instructor

I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.

Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.

Certificates

We’re awarding certificates for this course!

Check out the How to earn your certificate video for instructions on how to earn yours and click the available certificate levels below for more information.

How to earn your certificate

Work your way towards your certificate for this course by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Complete and pass the Knowledge Quiz (Merit level courses only)
  • Complete the Distinction Certificate Project (Distinction level courses only) - look out for the video marked with
  • Upload your Distinction project to the My Projects area in your account
  • Request your certificate when you've completed the requirements for the certificate level you're working towards

Good luck!

Pass certificates

We're awarding 'Pass' level certificates for this course.

You can work your way towards your 'Pass' certificate by following these simple steps.

  • Watch the course videos
  • Complete the Class Projects - look out for the videos marked with
  • Upload your class projects into the My Projects area in your account
  • Don't forget to request your certificate when all your projects are complete

Good luck!

Downloads & Exercise files

Transcript

Hey there, in this video we are going to put Strokes around the outside of text and graphics. They're not completely, watch this, when they start overlapping they start joining, but the Stroke remains around the outside. It's cool for drawings as well, you can see, this one here has a Stroke but it's only around the outside of everything. Let's go and do that now. 

To start with, let's do it with Type. So 'Type Tool', I'm going to put in my 'Living Spree'. If your tracking is way off like mine, I'm going to select it all. Remember, we can hold down the 'Alt' key, and hit the 'up arrow'. That's on a PC, it's 'Option' and the 'up arrow' on a Mac. Get it nice, and then I'm going to make it nice and big. 

Next thing I want to do is give it a white Fill, and give it a Stroke. So if I give it a Stroke this way it's fine, but when I start tracking it in, so I'm holding the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac, and just kind of like, start. You see, when it starts overlapping it does this. You might like that, it's cool. But let's say I just want it running around the outside, that's what we came here for. All we need to do is open up the 'Appearance Panel'. It's under 'Window', 'Appearance', or you can click on this dotted line here. At the moment, the line is around the actual characters inside of here. So I double click the characters, there's the Stroke, that's not where I want it, I'm going to delete it. Or you can just delete it, or not put it on in general. 

So, let's click off and click back on it with the 'Black Arrow'. Characters are kind of hidden in this little group. We got this outside group that we can apply it to. That's where the real magic happens. If I click on this you can see, it goes around our characters again but watch this, if I drag it down, and outside of characters, just below it, goes around the outside. Cool, huh? Just grab this and crank it up. You don't have to stop at one. I can click on this, which duplicates it, and I can have another one that is that-- where's those colors I'm using? There we go, that color. Just make sure it's a little bit bigger. 

I can have more than one around the outside. The Type is still editable. So you can change things. I want to add a Stroke just to the outside, don't add it there. Especially if your undo doesn't work properly. What you need to do is add it in the Appearance Panel. Let's click on a 'New Stroke'. And it's partially kind of right so I'm going to maybe make a Magenta, so you can see. But dragging it out and underneath contents. Then it's kind of around the group. So let's now increase the Font size. You can see, there's a Stroke still on the outside. I'm just going to make mine black, because that's what I wanted. 

The one thing you might run into is, can you see, there's something weird happening at the edge there because of the shape. The Stroke here just might need some adjustment. You might want to play around with the Capping. Probably in this case, it's the Cornering. You might have to go to 'Round Join', just watch it. Types it up, or you might have to join depending on what you want to look for. Even dash. So that's how to put it around text, and around images. 

You notice, when I undid before I undid too much and got rid of the cool Stroke that I had around the outside. That's okay. One of the things you might run into is, we made this earlier in the previous tutorial, and maybe you want to steal it, so you grab the Eye Dropper Tool. You're like, 'Give me that one, I want that guy." It's that-- the Layer order over here plays a big importance. This is the Stroke, but the Fill here is way at the bottom. So we're going to make sure that the Fill is at the top. We're going to give it a Fill of white. So the Layer order with Fills, you might need to do some adjustments with. 

All right, that is how to add the Stroke just around the outside of both type and graphics. All right, let's get into the next video.

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