How to add a stroke line around the outside of text or shapes in Illustrator

Hey there, in this video we are going to put Strokes around the outside of text and graphics. They're not completely, watch this, when they start overlapping they start joining, but the Stroke remains around the outside. It's cool for drawings as well, you can see, this one here has a Stroke but it's only around the outside of everything. Let's go and do that now. 

To start with, let's do it with Type. So 'Type Tool', I'm going to put in my 'Living Spree'. If your tracking is way off like mine, I'm going to select it all. Remember, we can hold down the 'Alt' key, and hit the 'up arrow'. That's on a PC, it's 'Option' and the 'up arrow' on a Mac. Get it nice, and then I'm going to make it nice and big. 

Next thing I want to do is give it a white Fill, and give it a Stroke. So if I give it a Stroke this way it's fine, but when I start tracking it in, so I'm holding the 'Alt' key on a PC, or 'Option' key on a Mac, and just kind of like, start. You see, when it starts overlapping it does this. You might like that, it's cool. But let's say I just want it running around the outside, that's what we came here for. All we need to do is open up the 'Appearance Panel'. It's under 'Window', 'Appearance', or you can click on this dotted line here. At the moment, the line is around the actual characters inside of here. So I double click the characters, there's the Stroke, that's not where I want it, I'm going to delete it. Or you can just delete it, or not put it on in general. 

So, let's click off and click back on it with the 'Black Arrow'. Characters are kind of hidden in this little group. We got this outside group that we can apply it to. That's where the real magic happens. If I click on this you can see, it goes around our characters again but watch this, if I drag it down, and outside of characters, just below it, goes around the outside. Cool, huh? Just grab this and crank it up. You don't have to stop at one. I can click on this, which duplicates it, and I can have another one that is that-- where's those colors I'm using? There we go, that color. Just make sure it's a little bit bigger. 

I can have more than one around the outside. The Type is still editable. So you can change things. I want to add a Stroke just to the outside, don't add it there. Especially if your undo doesn't work properly. What you need to do is add it in the Appearance Panel. Let's click on a 'New Stroke'. And it's partially kind of right so I'm going to maybe make a Magenta, so you can see. But dragging it out and underneath contents. Then it's kind of around the group. So let's now increase the Font size. You can see, there's a Stroke still on the outside. I'm just going to make mine black, because that's what I wanted. 

The one thing you might run into is, can you see, there's something weird happening at the edge there because of the shape. The Stroke here just might need some adjustment. You might want to play around with the Capping. Probably in this case, it's the Cornering. You might have to go to 'Round Join', just watch it. Types it up, or you might have to join depending on what you want to look for. Even dash. So that's how to put it around text, and around images. 

You notice, when I undid before I undid too much and got rid of the cool Stroke that I had around the outside. That's okay. One of the things you might run into is, we made this earlier in the previous tutorial, and maybe you want to steal it, so you grab the Eye Dropper Tool. You're like, 'Give me that one, I want that guy." It's that-- the Layer order over here plays a big importance. This is the Stroke, but the Fill here is way at the bottom. So we're going to make sure that the Fill is at the top. We're going to give it a Fill of white. So the Layer order with Fills, you might need to do some adjustments with. 

All right, that is how to add the Stroke just around the outside of both type and graphics. All right, let's get into the next video.