Entering and Editing Artistic Text Artistic text will serve you best for illustration headlines, callouts, and on any occasion when you want to create text that has a special effect such as extrusion, an envelope, text on a path, and so on. To add a line of artistic text to a document, use the Text tool to click an insertion point, and then type your phrase; alternatively, after clicking an insertion point, press CTRL+V to paste any text you have loaded on Windows’ Clipboard. Creating several lines of artistic text simply involves typing and then pressing ENTER to put a hard return at the end of the line; you then continue typing. By default, all artistic text is set in Arial 24 point; later in this chapter you’ll see how to change the default. Artistic text is also easy to convert to curves so you can modify a character in a word: for example, Microsoft’s logo has a tick missing in the second “o”. To duplicate this effect (but not Microsoft’s logo!), you’d begin with artistic text for the company name, press CTRL+Q (Arrange | Convert To Curves), and then edit using the Shape tool. Artistic text, as editable text, can be fine-tuned using the features on the property bar when the text is selected using either the Pick tool or the Text tool. The options are shown in Figure 12-2. 334 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-2 Use the property bar to get artistic text to look exactly the way you want. Mirroring (horizontal, vertical) Type of Font (file) Font List Font Size Bold Italic Underline Character Formatting Text Alignment Edit Text ● Mirroring (horizontal and vertical) In addition to creating special effects, the mirroring buttons are also useful when, for example, you want to print a T-shirt transfer with your company name. The name needs to be reversed (mirrored horizontally) to print on the transfer paper, so the un-reversed print on the T-shirt reads correctly (or at least without the need for a mirror). ● Type of Font (file) To the left of the font name displayed in the Font list drop- down box is an icon signifying what file format the font uses: OpenType, Type 1, or TrueType. This is a nicety when you’re sorting your fonts in Bitstream Font Navigator or Windows’ Fonts utility in Control Panel. ● Font Name This is the name of the typeface you select. By default, you’re using Arial 24 point. You change fonts in a new document by selecting text you’ve typed with the Pick tool and then choosing a different font from the Font list drop-down. If a font has family members, a right triangle can be seen to the right of the font name when the drop-down list is extended, and you can choose it by clicking the (flyout) triangle. You can also perform a speed-search by clicking the current name in the Font list box and then typing the first few letters of the font you want. The drop- down list immediately scrolls to the neighborhood of installed fonts, making your selection a fast and effortless one. Note also that on the Font list drop-down, at the top (above the divider bar), are the fonts you’ve chosen recently—from previous documents and even from previous CorelDRAW sessions. ● Font Size Text has traditionally been measured in points; with current digital typeface technology, the traditional 72.27 points has been rounded off to 72 points to the inch. Artistic text used as a headline can ideally be anywhere from 24 points for a flyer headline to 72 points for an impactful newspaper headline to 300 points and up (there’s no hypothetical limit to how large artistic text can be)—which is over 4 inches in height—for headlines that fairly shout at the reader. ● Bold and Italic These buttons on the property bar are shortcuts to defining a whole line of text or only selected characters as bold and italic members of the typeface shown in the Font list box. If a specific font has no family members, CorelDRAW doesn’t “fake” a bold or italic look, and the buttons are dimmed. If you need an italic treatment of a font that has no italic family member, a quick fix is to use the Transformation docker and then to set Skew to about –12º to apply to the artistic text. ● Underline An underline is an effect available for every font you have installed— you click the button when text is selected and CorelDRAW renders an underline. You can modify the style of the underline to your choosing by pressing CTRL+T, and then on the Character formatting docker choose from the Character Effects | Underline drop-down. If you don’t see the preset you want, choose Edit from the list, and then build the underline width and style you need. Underlines are great for professional documents, particularly legal ones, but an underline isn’t the most clever way to emphasize a phrase in an advertisement. Use a bold font instead CHAPTER 12: Getting Artistic with Text 335 12 or a colored outline or a gradient fill to attract attention artistically. Although underlines are effects, they’re very real, and if you convert an underlined phrase to curves ( CTRL+Q), the underline becomes an object. ● Text Alignment This drop-down lets you set how lines of text are aligned relative to one another. Although justification will serve you best when using long columns of paragraph text, artistic text takes on a more polished look, too, when you apply, for example, Center justification to two or three lines. By default, there is no justification for newly entered artistic text, but for all intents and purposes, this is left-justified text. Full Justify creates a splendid, professional look for columns of paragraph text, but tends to generate an awkward look for artistic text, because a line containing only one word with only a few characters has to take on very wide character spacing. Similarly, Right justification is not an everyday choice for audiences who read Western languages (from left to right). Right justification is a “slow read”; hyphenations and line breaks between words usually look awkward, and this type of justification should be reserved for a page layout where the right edge of the text needs to align perfectly to the vertical of a graphic and the left side of the column can be flowing and freeform. Fo rce Justify creates lines of text whose left and right edges are perfectly vertical, like with Full Justify, but with an important difference. Force Justify gives equal emphasis to the spacing between characters; although it can sometimes create unsightly gaps (called rivers) in paragraph text, it’s usually a good alignment choice for correcting justified lines of text where there are too few words on a line, and when hyphenation is not used. Force Justify can also be used as an artistic treatment of paragraph text, as shown in this illustration. 336 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide Full justification Force justification ● Character Formatting This button will serve the most creative purposes when you have one or only a few characters selected using the Text tool. You can underline a single character, change its font type, family member, point size, and even rotate the selected character(s), all through Character Effects and Character Shift on the Character formatting docker. See the following section, “Character Formatting” for more information. ● Edit Text This button displays a text-editing box, which also appears when you click a piece of text to which is applied an effect such as an envelope or an extrude. CorelDRAW is designed with text-editing flexibility in mind, so to transform text using just about any feature—and to allow the text to still be editable—you work in a proxy box so you don’t have to start over when you make a typographic error. Here’s a visual example: You’ve chosen a lovely font to express a lovely sentiment for a card and have extruded the font. In the morning, you find you’ve misspelled “Happy”. No big deal. You click an insertion point in the text where the fix is needed by using the Text tool; the Edit Text dialog appears, you enter the additional characters, and finally click OK. Occasionally, you might need to modify an envelope containing text if you’re adding a lot of characters, but the Edit Text dialog is your friend in a jam, and as you’ll see, you can even change the font of selected characters, the family members, and the point size. Character Formatting You’ll often want to change the look of only one or two characters in an artistic text phrase in your document. Character formatting can be accomplished using: ● The Shape tool in combination with the property bar. ● The Text tool in combination with the Character formatting docker. As you can see in Figure 12-3, you have some options using the Shape tool to select characters, but you have a more complete set of options when you highlight a character with the Text CHAPTER 12: Getting Artistic with Text 337 12 tool and then click the Character Formatting button on the property bar. For quick and simple reformatting, it’s the Shape tool, and for extensive reworking of your artistic text, use the Text tool. You have additional options for lines running under, over, and through selected characters, and if, for example, you’ve used the Character formatting docker to put a Double Thin Underline beneath your text, you can remove this underline later using the property bar while character nodes have been selected using the Shape tool. Character nodes appear black when selected (as shown in Figure 12-3), and your cursor is a clear indication you’re editing text with the Shape tool and not an object path node. Artistic Text and the Shape Tool The Shape tool can be used to make various changes to the text, including repositioning individual characters within the artistic text object, changing the horizontal and vertical spacing of all the text at once, and selecting nonconsecutive characters, so you change their properties without changing the rest of the text in the object. Selecting and Moving Characters with the Shape Tool To select any characters in an artistic text object, select the text object with the Shape tool ( F10)—the cursor changes to the Shape tool pointer with an A next to it. With the text object selected in this way, a small, empty box or “control handle” appears at the lower-left corner of each character, as shown in Figure 12-4. 338 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-3 Format and reformat text characters using the Character Formatting box and the property bar. Font List Font Size Bold Underline Italic Horizontal and Vertical Character Offset Angle Superscript Subscript Small Caps All Caps To select any character, click its control handle using the Shape tool. To select nonconsecutive characters, hold SHIFT (not CTRL as you’d anticipate) while clicking. You can also marquee-drag around the nodes you want to select with the Shape tool. With the control handles selected, you can modify the text formatting, fill, outline, and position of those characters. To move one or more characters selected with the Shape tool, click-drag one of the selected control handles—all the selected characters will move together. Unless you’re striving for a humorous effect, however, it’s usually a good idea to keep the characters you move horizontally aligned: hold CTRL while dragging—vertical moves do not accept the CTRL key for constraining movement. Moving characters with the Shape tool changes the horizontal- and vertical-shift values of them, and the new values can be seen in the Character Formatting box ( CTRL+T). Moving characters with the Shape tool is useful for manually adjusting the position of characters visually to improve the kerning, the inter-character spacing. Although repositioning character nodes can create fun, freeform headlines, it’s also useful if you own a “bum font,” a digital typeface whose poor coding results in certain characters neighboring other characters too tightly or too loosely. Then again, almost every typeface has poor kerning for the word “HAWAII”; at the top of the next illustration is the way the characters align as typed. There is usually too little space between the IIs, and the A and W should tuck into each other, but do not. At bottom, after 30 seconds with the Shape tool, the word not only has a better relationship between negative and positive areas, but the word is also shorter (which is good when design space is cramped). CHAPTER 12: Getting Artistic with Text 339 12 FIGURE 12-4 Set character and line spacing, and reposition individual characters with the Shape tool. Line-spacing handle Character control nodes Shape tool pointer for text Selected nodes Character-spacing handle The Shape tool can be nudged after selecting character nodes and nodes along object paths. Therefore, you can create better headline kerning by first adjusting the Nudge Distance in Tools | Options | Document | Rulers and then using the keyboard arrows to create a professionally typeset headline. Adjusting Spacing with the Shape Tool When an artistic text object is selected with the Shape tool, two additional handles appear at the lower-left and lower-right corners of the object, as shown in Figure 12-5. These two handles modify the line spacing and character spacing for the entire block in one go. To increase or decrease the word and character spacing, drag the handle at the lower- right corner of the selected text object right or left with the Shape tool. To increase or decrease the line spacing (also the before-paragraph spacing), drag the handle at the lower- left corner of the selected text object down or up with the Shape tool. All spacing values modified with the Shape tool can be viewed and edited in the Text | Paragraph Formatting Docker. Combining and Breaking Apart Artistic Text You can combine several artistic text objects into a single artistic text object: select all the artistic text objects with the Pick tool, and then choose Arrange | Combine or press CTRL+L. Each text object starts a new paragraph in the new text object. Ordinarily, the Combine command converts CorelDRAW objects to simplified ones, but text objects retain their editability as text. 340 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-5 Leading (inter-line spacing), kerning (inter-character spacing), and inter-word spacing can be tuned using the text handles. The text objects are combined in the order in which they are selected—if you select several objects in one go by dragging a marquee around them, they will be selected from front to back. Text objects that do not contain spaces are combined onto a single line. If any of the selected objects is not a text object, all the text objects will be converted to curves and combined with the nontext object. If the text doesn't combine in the order you want or expect, you can reverse the stacking order of the original text objects by first pressing CTRL+Z (Edit | Undo) and then choosing Arrange | Order | Reverse Order. Artistic text can also be broken apart from several lines of stacked text to individual lines, all unique objects. To break apart artistic text, choose Arrange | Break Artistic Text, or press CTRL+K. With multi-line text objects, the break apart command results in one text object for each line or paragraph from the original object. Also, using the break apart command on single-line text objects results in one text object for each word. As you’d expect, breaking apart single-word text objects results in a new text object for each character. Converting Artistic Text to Curves Many effects can be applied directly to artistic text, but you might want to apply effects that cannot be applied as a “live” effect to editable text. To achieve the desired effect, the artistic text objects first need to be converted to curves: choose Arrange | Convert To Curves, or press CTRL+Q. Text that has been converted to curves is no longer editable with the Text tool and must be edited with the Shape tool instead, just like any other curve object. As mentioned earlier, converting text to plain objects with paths and control nodes is a good way to begin creating logos. The following illustration shows a treatment of artistic text converted to curves. With a push of a node here and a pull there, the result is a workable party store sign. See Chapter 11 for the details on how to use the Smudge brush to produce this effect. CHAPTER 12: Getting Artistic with Text 341 12 Entering and Editing Paragraph Text Paragraph text is very much like the frames of text that professionals work with in desktop publishing (DTP) applications such as CorelVentura and Adobe InDesign; however, in CorelDRAW you’ll soon see options and features that DTP applications don’t provide. The largest difference between artistic text and paragraph text is that paragraph text is held in a container—a frame—so you don’t directly edit, for example, the width of characters in a paragraph text frame simply by yanking on a bounding box handle with the Pick tool. In Figure 12-6 at top are duplicate paragraph frames; they’re easy to spot and differentiate from artistic text because even when not selected, they have a dashed outline around them signifying the paragraph text frame. The duplicate at top right has been scaled so it’s wider 342 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-6 When you edit paragraph text with the Pick tool, you’re only changing the shape of the frame, not the text itself. The Pick tool modifies the container for paragraph text. The Pick tool directly modifies artistic text. than at left: note that the lines of text flow differently, but the characters remain unchanged, as does the spacing between characters and words. At bottom the same historic American address has been entered as artistic text, and then at right the bounding box was dragged to the right using the Pick tool. The words per line don’t rearrange, but what does happen is that the characters themselves are stretched, which is often unwanted. That’s the biggest difference between paragraph and artistic text: if text doesn’t have a frame, then you’re scaling the text. Working with paragraph text can be a challenge, a little more complex than riding a bike but a lot less complex than rocket science. However, once you get the hang of it (and the following sections are your guide), you’ll find paragraph text indispensable for business designs, and those Tri-Fold and Top Fold page presets you learned about in Chapter 6 will spring to life and a new purpose. Your brochures will look as slick as can be. To create a paragraph text object, select the Text tool in the toolbox, and then click-drag diagonally to create a rectangle into which you'll enter the text. In the next illustration, the arrow at left shows the click-diagonal drag technique (commonly called a marquee drag), and at right you see the result. The text inside the paragraph frame is simple a visual prompt, and it disappears after you’ve added text. A paragraph text frame has resizing, kerning, and leading handles (artistic text features these as well), discussed later in this chapter. You have three ways to fill a paragraph text frame with text: ● Type in the frame Manually, it’s probably best to leave spell checking on as you go. ● Paste from the Clipboard You’ll see a dialog before you can paste if you press CTRL+V or choose Edit | Paste (and Edit | Paste Special). Here you can choose to keep or discard the formatting of the text on the Clipboard. If your cursor is inserted in a paragraph text block when you choose Paste Special, the result is a new block of artistic text, regardless of your cursor’s insertion point. If you want to paste into existing paragraph text, pressing CTRL+V—the simple Paste command—does the trick. ● Import a text file Depending on the text file type, you might be prompted to install a compatibility pack, especially for older MS Word documents. With a broadband connection, the process takes about 3 minutes, you don’t have to quit CorelDRAW, and you can paste after the compatibility program is installed. In contrast, a plain TXT file with no font or paragraph attributes will import perfectly after you choose a style of import from the Importing/Pasting Text dialog. CHAPTER 12: Getting Artistic with Text 343 12 . property bar when the text is selected using either the Pick tool or the Text tool. The options are shown in Figure 12-2. 334 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-2 Use the property bar to. not selected, they have a dashed outline around them signifying the paragraph text frame. The duplicate at top right has been scaled so it’s wider 342 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-6. character, as shown in Figure 12-4. 338 CorelDRAW X5 The Official Guide FIGURE 12-3 Format and reformat text characters using the Character Formatting box and the property bar. Font List Font Size Bold Underline Italic Horizontal