How to Place Text Inside Text in Illustrator

In this post I am going to dive deep inside your mind and show you how to place text inside text. Yes, you read it right! Text inside text! And guess what? I’ll even teach you how to put text inside text within an image. Wow! Wild, right? Don’t worry, in Illustrator it’s quick and easy and you will practice all the skills you need to design awesome typography effects and upgrade your creative portfolio to absolute Hero mode!

This post is based on my recently updated Illustrator Advanced course, make sure to sign up at Bring Your Own Laptop! When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Illustrators, assemble!

How to Place Text inside Text in Illustrator

This is an Illustrator Advanced step-by-step guide, so I’ll skip the basics about outlines, clipping masks, or compound paths. If you need to refresh some skills or start learning from scratch all the wonders of vector-based design, head to my Illustrator Essentials course!

Let’s jump right in!

We are going to work with a basic gradient background file that is included in the Illustrator Advanced Course resource files, but feel free to create your own background, as well. Just ensure the file you use has a strong contrast with the vector artwork we will be designing.

Let’s type our text. I’ll be using the letters ‘G’ and ‘D’, you can pick others, just be sure that one of them has a gap in the center like an ‘A’, a ‘P’ or an ‘R’, because those will give us the chance to use cool features, like Text Wrap. Pick the Type tool from the left Toolbar and type your characters.

Next, we pick a heavy font as we want to create a large canvas for the text we will place within our text. If we make the characters too thin, the effect gets lost. Let’s pick a header-style Sans Serif font, set a large size and bold formatting. We need chunky letters to fit our inception text inside. Any color will work, I’ve picked default black because the fill will disappear in a few steps, so it makes no difference.

Pro tip: When you are setting up typography or creating a new logo, it is good practice to pick a solid black fill color. When you use black fill, you won’t be distracted by color and will focus only on shape. Good stuff! Moving on!

As I mentioned above, ensure you have a letter that closes upon itself, like an ‘O’ or a ‘D’ so you can learn how to handle that gap in the middle. It’s fun, trust me, and really makes this effect even more impressive.

Next, we duplicate our letters. This is a destructive design, we won’t be able to edit your text after we apply the effect, so it’s good to keep duplicates, just in case something goes wrong. I always prefer non-destructive techniques but they’re not always possible and many times it’s OK to break stuff if it delivers such cool results. You can use the shortcut Command + C to Copy and Command + V to Paste (that’s Control + C and Control + V on a PC) the letters and then move them away from the artboard, they won’t be lost in the workspace. You can also hold the Option key on a Mac, or the Alt key on a PC, and click and drag with your mouse to create a new copy. Smart thing to do, backing up your text.

Next step, break the font and convert it into shapes. This is the destructive step I mentioned. After this, there will be no way to modify this text with the Type tool. Let’s create outlines from our text. We can do it by using the shortcut Shift + Command + O on a Mac or, Shift + Control + O on a PC, or right-click the text and pick the option ‘Create Outlines’ from the menu. One more: we can click on Type from the top menu bar and choose ‘Create Outlines’ from the menu.

Next, we ungroup our shapes so we can work with them individually. Let’s start with the quick and easy one, the letter ‘G’ and then move on to the almost-just-as-quick and easy second example, the letter ‘D’. There are many ways to do this, the most efficient ones are clicking the Ungroup button from the Quick Actions panel or striking the shortcut keys Shift + Command + G on a Mac, or Shift + Control + G on a PC.

Let’s select the Area Type tool from within the Type group in the left toolbar. Click and hold the Type button to open the flyout menu and access the Area Type icon, as below.

When we click on the ‘G’ shape’s path to add the new text, that’s the line with anchor points that surrounds the shape, this error notification pops up. Illustrator understands that the ‘G’ is actually a compound shape and won’t let us create the text inside the path.

How can we fix this? Many of you are already shouting it at the screen, I’m sure.

We need to make our character a non-compound shape. The quickest way to do it is to right-click over the shape and pick Release Compound Path from the menu. You won’t see anything different immediately, but if nothing unexpected went wrong, the path is released and we can move to the next step.

Timeout #1

A quick note on Compound and Non-Compound paths, so we know that Illustrator isn’t trying to drive us mad.

Let’s break it down to circles:

• A Non-Compound path is a single open path line or a shape made from a single path. The basics of basics. A pen tool drawing, a solid color fill, stroke or no stroke, one path limiting it.  

• A Compound path is a combination of two or more paths. If you create one basic circle and a small second circle inside the first, align them up, select them both, and hit Command + 8 on a Mac or Control + 8 on a PC (shortcut for Compound Path > Make), you get a circle with a hole in the middle! A donut circle!

Now we are ready for our first level inception! People who haven’t seen the movie Inception may feel a bit lost, right now, but it’s a great sci-fi thriller about men who can place ideas across consecutive mental layers – something close to that classic “waking up from a dream inside a dream narrative style.

Using the Area Type tool, click on the ‘g’ shape’s path line. If you click anywhere inside the shape it won’t work. Illustrator automatically fills the shape with placeholder text, a lorem ipsum gibberish paragraph, good enough for testing or creating a mockup.

To keep a clear and balanced shape we can try to avoid large gaps between words and lines, by adjusting the character and paragraph settings from the Properties Panel. Consider adjusting character weight, size, tracking (spacing between characters), leading (spacing between lines), paragraph alignment, and others. There's a lot of back and forth between settings, but the effort is worth it.

Now that I’m happy with the typography effect, I’ll give it a white color fill to keep the design light and relaxing.

Moving to the character ‘D’, we have it outlined, but we didn’t change it to a non-compound shape. Let’s do it now so Illustrator doesn’t get all cranky and pop that error message. Once again, right-click over the shape and select Release Compound Path from the menu.

And something is different, now! What happened?

It’s actually quite easy to understand. When we ask Illustrator to release a compound path, it converts the initial vector object into a single path shape. But now we know that our ‘D’ character started with two combined paths, right? Illustrator splits and converts both paths into individual single non-compound shapes and lets us decide what to do with both of them, individually. Cool, huh?

Let’s click on the shape that used to be the space inside the ‘D’ to select it. Then, we drag it out of the artboard but keep it close because we will need it again!

Next, we go back to the Area Type tool and click on the path line to fill our basic shape with placeholder text. Let’s fill this new text with white to keep things consistent. If you like, you can try to match other colors, of course. It’s all good, as long as you maintain accessible readability in your design.

Now let’s bring back the spare part we left next to the artboard in the previous steps. Click and drag it in, and place it over the text-filled shape, as it was initially.

As an alternative, we can cut out the shape (Command + X on a Mac, Control + X on a PC) instead of dragging it out from the artboard, and when we are ready to bring it back, we can use the Paste in Place feature, hitting the shortcut keys Shift + Command + V on a Mac or Shift + Control + V on a PC. Illustrator will remember the shape’s original position. Awesome!

Make sure, of course, that you don’t use the Copy or Cut commands before taking this last step.

Next, let’s use the amazing Text Wrap feature. If you are familiar with InDesign, you may have used this technique already, but it is a great design asset for Illustrator, as well.

There’s no big secret behind it, either! Select the small shape, go to Object in the top menu bar, and then hover with mouse cursor over Text Wrap and finally click on Make.

We can adjust the effect’s offset, or the space between shape and placeholder text, by going back to Object > Text Wrap, but this time click on Text Wrap Options from the flyout menu. Adjust the offset value to match the effect you are looking for. Higher values mean larger distance between elements, lower value reduces that distance. Quick and easy as I promised!

To finish, remove both Fill and Stroke colors from the wrapped shape and make it invisible! We can’t delete the shape, because we would lose the text wrap effect, of course. Doesn’t it look so cool?

Let’s move on to Inception level two and place text inside text within an image!

Timeout #2

Do you love typography and exploring the infinite ways to transform words into amazing visual art? Check these 25 awesome galleries to get inspired! 

How to Place Text inside Text Within an Image in Illustrator

Recycling is a good thing, so we will use the incredible text inside text effect we’ve just designed for this new level of awesome typography.

Inside the same downloadable file, there’s a second artboard with a black background. If you’re a BYOL already, check it out in the files section of the Illustrator Advanced course. You can also create your own new artboard and add a basic black background – or any other dark color, the goal is optimal contrast.

Let’s duplicate our first typography and place it inside the new artboard.

Next, let’s bring in a new image and set up our magic! We’re awesome designers, so let’s memorize these cool shortcuts! Hit Shift + Command + P on a Mac and Shift + Control + P on a PC to access your folders and select the file you want to Place inside the artboard. I’ll use another image from my  Illustrator Advanced Course. You can use any image you like.

After we place the new image, we need to send it to the back so the typography effect is left on top. Right-click over the image, hover with the mouse cursor over Arrange and select Send to Back. Abstract images may work better for this effect, but feel free to try with as many different image styles as possible.

Next, we make any necessary adjustments to the image, in size or position, until we feel it is balanced with the typography and creates the effect we are looking for. 

 Next, we are back to outlines and compound paths. First, let’s right-click our text object and select Create Outlines. Remember that, from this point, we won’t be able to edit our text anymore, but duplicate or back it up if you feel you may need to make any changes in the future.

Now, we are going to transform these outlines into a compound path shape. The opposite of what we did a few steps up. Why? Because we are going to create a Clipping Mask to finish the effect, and clipping masks simply love compound paths!

With our text layer selected, we click on Object in the top menu bar, hover over Compound Path and select Make. Quick incredible shortcut: Command + 8 on a Mac or Control + 8 on a PC.

We are close to the end of this dream inside a dream within a dream adventure. Select both text and image, right-click with the mouse and select Make Clipping Mask. Is there an awesome shortcut? Of course there is! Command + 7 on a Mac or Control + 7 on a PC!

One last warning from Illustrator. This time, do it your way and hit that Yes button like you mean it! You know what you are doing, you are in control!

Are you ready? Keep on scrolling and…

There We Have It!

Wow, this was a ride! It started easy, then we added a layer or two of extra complexity, but if you follow this step-by-step guide at your own pace, go back whenever you need to, and never, ever give up, you will be mastering this skill in no time at all! Hope you had fun, I find these visual effects always motivating and challenging, so I love sharing them with all of you! 

What 's Next?

To go deeper with Illustrator, join BYOL and you will gain access to my Illustrator Essentials and Advanced courses as well as my 30+ additional courses on Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, Figma, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Get started here!

See you in class! – Dan