How to Use the Touch Type in Illustrator

In this post, we will explore an incredible typography tool in Adobe Illustrator that is perfect for designing creative headlines and text effects. 

This is more than just a fun and efficient tool, it’s a workflow lifesaver! With the help of the Touch Type tool, we can transform boring titles into true digital artwork.

This step-by-step tutorial is based on my Illustrator Advanced Course. When you become a BYOL member, you gain access to this course as well as my 30+ additional courses on After Effects, Photoshop,Illustrator, Lightroom, and more. As a BYOL member you will also enjoy personalized support, earn certificates, and tackle exciting community challenges. Head here to sign-up!

Fire up your laptops and let’s begin!

One Text Tool to Rule them All.

I remember the days when customizing typography was a headache. We had to break text into outlines, spend a ton of time manually adjusting shapes, alignment, spacing, colors, and effect, while destroying any possibility of going back to the original text and changing any word or character.

The Touch Type tool is one of the coolest innovations in Adobe Illustrator CC and I haven’t stopped using it since it was introduced. It allows us to scale, rotate, move, and overlap individual characters within a word, keeping them editable at any time.

There are other great text tools in Illustrator, of course, like Type on a Path or the Area Type tool, but Touch Type is truly remarkable when you need to breathe new life into a design with only minutes to go before you hit the project’s deadline.

Let’s have a look at the magic we can perform!

The Touch Type tool

Let’s start this tutorial with two sets of typography that I prepared in Illustrator. If you’re signed up for the Illustrator Advanced Course you’ll find them in the exclusive download files. 

The first set displays BYOL’s core values. The second is an immortal quote from a wise man who was once seen meditating at the top of a mountain, contemplating life and human existence surrounded by his students.

Moving on! These fonts look interesting, they have that freehand, decorative style. However, let's take these words and turn them into something attention-grabbing and fun!

Enter the Touch Type tool!

We can find it inside the Type tool’s group, so click and hold the Type button until the fly out menu pops up and pick the last option. There’s a shortcut for both Mac and PC, that’s Shift + T.

Touch Type Action Handles

With the Touch Type tool selected, we can now choose an individual character from this type set and start changing it. Let’s click on the “H” character in Humility. A bounding box surrounds the letter, with a visible group of handles for us to tinker with. Let’s see what’s on the menu.

• Upper-left corner handle – scales the character vertically (height)

• Upper-right corner handle – scales the character proportionately (large / small)

• Lower-right corner handle – scales the character horizontally (width)

• Lower-left corner handle – moves the character to a new position.

• Upper-middle handle – rotates the character (clock / counterclockwise)

• There’s an extra option below the bounding box, Glyphs, visible when fonts have alternative glyphs. This allows us to switch between character variables.

Let’s start with Vertical scaling. It’s quick and easy! Click and hold the bounding box’s upper-left corner handle and drag it up or down, to raise or lower the character’s height. Release the mouse button to finish the adjustment.

Nice! The other characters that form the word remain unchanged.

Let’s turn it up a notch and try proportional scaling.

Same method: Touch Type tool and letter selected, click, and hold the upper-right handle and drag up and to the right to increase character size or down and to the left to reduce character size.

Impressive! As we can see below, when we reduce (or increase) a character’s size, the letters to the right of it automatically adjust their position. We’ll address kerning and tracking in a bit but keep this in mind. How great is that?

Moving on, let’s check out horizontal scaling.

To adjust a character’s width, click and hold the bounding box’s lower-right handle and drag left to slim it down or right to make it wider.

This may look a bit strange, but trust me, there’s more to explore and everything will look quite surprising when we are done!

Let’s rotate the “H” character. Click and hold the upper-middle handle and drag to the right for clockwise rotation or left to do it counterclockwise.

As we rotate the “H” character, all the other characters adjust their position. There’s a gap between the “H” and the “U” letters that looks too wide, but we’ll fix that a couple of paragraphs down, so let’s keep on pushing and take a look at glyphs!

Choosing alternative glyphs depends on the font family we’ve picked for the text we are customizing. Open Type fonts often include a set of character variations that add a unique look to typography. In this example, we have a few options available, let’s see how we swap them.

When we select a character with the Touch Type tool, if the font holds alternative glyphs, they will become visible next to a blue rectangle at the bottom of the bounding box. Click on one of the variations to apply it to the character. One-click wonder!

Finally, the last action handle allows us to move the character to a new position and it’s placed on the lower-left corner of the bounding box. As the distinctive color indicates, this handle is always selected. Click and hold with the mouse cursor and drag in any direction to move it around.

It is also possible to overlap characters with this option, so the fun continues! Keep on reading, things will get even better!

TImeout #1

I highly recommend this read about the importance of typography in graphic design.

Editing Text objects modified with the Touch Type tool.

This is the game-changing detail! After scaling, rotating, and repositioning our characters, we can still use the regular Type tool to edit the text! For this example, I’ll replace the “H” for an “R” just for this step, so we can see that any change set for this first character isn’t lost!

I’m sure you are already going crazy with all the possible adjustments we can make for each character and how they can transform your typography projects! But don’t go anywhere, there are still more treats to share!

Let’s have a quick look at what we’ve done so far.

Let’s learn what else we can do to make our new typography take off! Let’s begin with that gap between the “H” and “U.”

These definitely feel too far apart, so let’s learn two ways to fix it.

We can use the regular Type tool, place the cursor between both letters and adjust the Kerning value at the Character panel to the right of your workspace. Set a value of -200 to bring them closer together. It looks a lot better! There’s a shortcut for this as well, hold Option on a Mac or Alt on a PC and use the left and right keys to adjust kerning.

Let’s do the same to the “Y” at the end of the word and bring it closer to the “T.” But let’s try a different approach. Select the “Y” with the Touch Type tool. Remember what the lower-left corner handle does? That’s right, it moves the character to a new position.

Done! All nice and wrapped together, slightly overlapping, really stylish and cool! What else could we ask for?

Timeout #2

Get inspired with these 30 typography examples and explore the world of creative artists and visual communication across different media and styles. 

Let yourself go!

Boom! Use your imagination and the Touch Type tool to select each character and give it its own personality and style! Just like you do with any ordinary text object, but more fun!

And here’s a peek at the revamped philosopher’s quote:

And there we have it!

Do you still remember how these typography sets looked at the start? They were ok, but now, my friends, they look memorable! That must be our goal in every design we tackle, that’s why we are creative students and creative professionals. We don’t take the easy road; we make our very own unique road!

Now you’ve met the Touch Type tool – or refreshed your knowledge and skills – get out there and create brilliant typography as a confident and talented vector designer!

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 Figma, Photoshop,  Lightroom, Premiere Pro, Webflow, 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