Expert: Amy - 1/26/2004

Question
Mac / Illustrator 9

I want to spell a word and distort it as follows and can't figure out how to do it.

imagine... I spell the word "ADOBE"... and want it to look as though it is in perspective. So I want the left side to appear closer to me than the right side of the word. I don't know if I am clear or not. Image the word "ADOBE" was written on the side of a brick. If you put the brick on a table, at eye level and pushed the right side of the brick further away than the left... you would obviously see the word in perspective. How can i create that same effect in Illustrator? Do you know? I can't seem to find anyone that knows.

Thank you very much. I am in a time crunch and cannot figure this out at all.


Answer
Hi Jeff,

That's do-able, but not obvious, so don't feel bad if you didn't get it right away.

1. Create your text, then convert it to outlines using the Type > Create Outlines command.

2. Select the text object with the Selection Tool (V) (black arrow.)

3. While the text object is selected, select the Free Transform Tool (E) (it's the triangular arrow & dotted box tool directly below the scale tool.)

4. Click down **and hold** on a corner of the object, but don't move yet.

5. Still holding the mouse button down on that corner of the object, hold down the CTRL or Command key, in your case. The cursor changes to a little triangle and you can now drag that corner independently of the rest of the object, creating a perspective effect. Holding SHIFT at the same time constrains your drag, preserving your angles. You'll have to repeat for other corners.

Good luck with it!
Amy Pace

I ALMOST FORGOT.  It's almost essential that you have your bounding boxes turned on for this to work.  

Use View > Show Bounding box or Command + Shift + B to turn them on.

Bye!