How to create a hand sketched text effect using Illustrator

• January 29th, 2018
• Illustrator

In this short Illustrator screencast, we will show you how to create an authentic hand sketched text effect using Illustrator. This effect can be applied to typography or even shapes and takes less than a few minutes to apply. It’s a great technique that you will enjoy using in future design projects.

Hand sketched  text effect tutorial details

• Program: Illustrator
• Time estimation: Under 3 minutes
• Difficulty: Beginner

Preview

Video Transcript on how to create a hand sketched text effect using Illustrator:

Hello and welcome to Creative Nerds. In this tutorial, we’ll be sharing with you a technique on how to create a hand-scribbled text effect using Illustrator.

So we want to start off by writing out some text, so we grab the Type tool and we’ve just spelled out “Creative Nerds.” Now we’re going to head over to Effects and we’re going to select, in fact, we’re going to go to Stylize and we’re going to select Scribble and then we’re going change the angle to be 45 and we want to change the Path Overlap to be zero. We want the Variation to also be zero, and then we’re going to change the Stroke Width to be one pixel. The Curviness will be 1%, so that’s going to remain the same and you want a Variation to be 19% and then the Spacing will be five. In fact, we’ll go with three for the Spacing, that looks a little bit better, and then for the Variation we’ll go for two pixels.

Once you’ve applied all of those settings, those numbers into those boxes, we’re going to select the OK button and then we’re just going add a Stroke to this text. So we’re goinghead over to Layer and then we’re going to add a white Stroke, and we want to make it about one pixel. Yeah, one point for the stroke and there you go. We’ve created a hand-scribbled text effect in Illustrator in a matter of seconds. This is a handy technique that you can apply to further design projects.

Thanks for watching and stay tuned to Creative Nerds for very quick tips on how to use Illustrator.