Retro Text Effects with Illustrator's Blend Tool (+ FREE Textures!)

Follow along with today's Adobe Illustrator tutorial to create a simple but effective text effect with somewhat of a retro vibe, featuring stacks of text elements that are progressively spaced further apart. It reminds me of the kind of design you might see on an old VHS tape box or an ad for an 80s technology brand. Illustrator's Blend Tool will be used to create the basic effect, but I will also show you a trick to alter the spacing of the text with a cool easing effect and show how variations of the artwork can be created by combining different combinations of solid and outlined text styles.

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Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator design tutorials from Chris Spooner of Spoon Graphics. Subscribe to learn how to create stunning artwork as I share my tips and tricks in video format.

[DominicWade]

If you find the part where the Blend and Make is greyed out, go the Type Menu and Convert to Point Type. It should work now.

[cafehoneymoon]

this is awesome! before i knew about the blend tool to do this, I was doing this instead (which took me forever):
- create text outlines
-make sure snap to grid is on & adjust subdivisions accordingly
- add anchor points to the area you want the word to end; ex: at 1.5 in y-axis all the way across
-repeat for every letter & word
-select the old area you want to cut off and delete it
- copy & paste the original outlined text and repeat the process of adjusting where you want the new text to end
-ex: you could have grid preferences on gridline every 1 inch with 8 subdivisions. you can add anchor points on every subdivision 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-full text or 2-4-6-full text, etc.
- I don't know if this makes sense as to what I did but this shortcut is going to help me immensely!
Look forward to trying out the screen & multiply blending modes using your photocopy textures!

[gartimalti]

Thanks man, guys if you want to make this as a png without the background all you have to do is when you first create the first black square background set the opacity at 0% with the black color or any other colour so that you can make a transperent background with the text still.

[maurogayan]

Need more retro style tutorials. Much love <3

[viphia]

Thanks for the tutorial, it has helped me A LOT!

[raedjibrail]

Useful tips, clearly explained and easy to follow. Thank you. You have a new subscriber.

[dimensidesainstudio]

Thank you so much for this tutorial! Hope you always healthy and happy!

[bradmacdonald]

When I select the bottom most layer with the direct selection tool and swap the stroke and fill, it applies the fill / colour swap to all repeated layers in the blend. I made sure to only select the single layer, not the blend group.

[nirajfilms]

your tutorials are always the best sir!!!

[-agamen-]

Thank you So much for ur ti and support

[安柏留美菜鳥]

This was useful !! I was able to combine it with other designs, thank you so much !!

[colmeiadasfestasvilavelha]

Explained in great detail! Thank you so much!!

[johnmichaelabrenica]

Thanks a lot - your video is a Great start to soft soft. I'm onto it !

[armaturesmusic]

You love a 'here's what we did' round up

[t.o.a.a]

You're a god man thanks a lot.. really inspiring

[lisawernernguyen]

How do you make this a transparent background instead of a black background?

[KarenEscamilla]

Amazing video! Thank you for the tips!!

You are one of the graphic designers that artificial intelligence needs, no artificial intelligence will be able to do what you do, I hope to be as good a graphic designer as you, and I work on graphic design every day, waiting for the rest of the training videos and thank you for sharing all these videos and what you know with us.

[irenealessandra]

Thank you so much bro. Sending virtual hugs. Worked like a charm ;-)

[notsoohyper]

I follow these steps point to point and every time when I get to the Object> Blend>Make, my "Make" is grayed out. Any advice?