Illustrator Ink Effect and Morphing Type

Getting Started

There are lot of destructive and labor intensive ways to do this inky fluid text effect, but here’s a simple method that is infinitely editable with just a few tweaks in the Appearance panel. Enjoy these plainly written steps with clear visuals. This tutorial is fairly easy too, and is a nice primer for the Appearance panel if you’re a newcomer to Adobe Illustrator.

I’ve seen far too many cringe videos of design influencers showing how to do something in Illustrator that I had to jump in. No cheeseball facecam, no unnecessary pantomime, no need to pause, no need to zoom, no terrible background song (unless it’s the Beastie Boys, then well, ok), and no need to rewatch ten times because it goes too fast. And best of all, you can leave this page open and follow along at your own pace.

Create Editable, Fluid, Inky Type

Grab the type tool and write out your desired text; it can be a single word or a full sentence. Smooth forms tend to look best, so I’ll be using this font called Keep On Truckin from Dafont because it looks kind of groovy.

With your type selected, open the Pathfinder and select Options > Make Compound Shape. This will allow the text to behave like one large, simple shape but will still be fully editable type. We can do unnatural and slightly inappropriate things to compound shapes.

Write your word(s) of choice in a bold font.

Turn that text into a compound shape.

Go to the Appearance panel next and add the Offset Path effect to the compound shape.

For the Offset Path settings, choose something like 4px-8px, and set the Joins to Round. This will make the shapes thicker, and the join will make them connect smoothly. The larger the number, the farther away the fluidity will occur, and the more ‘gooey/sticky‘ things will become. However, if the values are too big, the letters will start filling their counters and close the letterforms altogether… like the hole in the d… the d-hole… it will vanish. Nobody wants a vanished d-hole.

Now add a second Offset Path effect. An alert will appear saying you’ve already got one. Ignore the message and apply the new effect because we know what we’re doing.

Make the offset value the opposite of the first; my example uses -4px. As long as the numbers are opposite each other everything will work as expected. Depending on your font and offset path settings, you may notice characters starting to stick together like the two Os below. It’s easy to come back later and experiment until you’re happy with how it looks or experiment with a different font altogether.

The Appearance panel will ultimately look like this (the offset path order is important). This panel is basically a non-destructive FX wündertab, and this tutorial is a great way to get your feet wet.

Order is important; the positive offset should be on top and the negative offset underneath.

Finally, adjust the letter placement using the Touch Type Tool to make some delicious ooey gooey text. If the Touch Type Tool button is not visible in the character panel, enable it under the Character options menu.

The Touch Type Tool is in the options menu.

Edit the letter positioning to your hearts’ content and make it as spicy as you like. Add a gradient, colored stroke, or some obligatory drips using strokes with tapered profiles. Experiment until all your fancies have been tickled. Et voilà!

With very little effort and some hand-placed drippy lines, the finished text comes together quickly. And it’s all still editable text.

This is only the beginning. There are endless layers of effects one could add and really build these up.

Wrapping up

Thanks for reading! I have an entire bucket of these simpler tutorials that I’ve never bothered writing until now, out of sheer indignation over the countless cringey design influencer tutorial videos that keep crossing my feed.

“What do you mean I have to watch this excessively overacted facecam pantomime again because step 19 is confusing, menus are too fast, I didn’t catch the filter name, everything is too small, the song is bad, there’s no video controls, and… oh, I already know how to do this because you’re making it harder than it needs to be. You have a lovely designer room though; I only have one lava lamp. But don’t think I didn’t notice your high engagement influencer content with massive following and thousands of likes using some of my material worded exactly as I wrote it… you know who you are.”

But I now just realized who I’ve become.

Me