Wrapping Text around a Shape Overview
I bet if we collected all the sports team’s crests ever made the central design theme would be the Teams Name wrapped around a circle. This style of design is popular for a reason, the designs are compact and combine a strong graphic element (the circle), with the identifying text, and usually a symbol, such as a catcher’s glove for a baseball team’s crest, that gives you visual information about the organization.
So… if you do graphic design you ARE inevitably going to be asked to create a design that incorporates text wrapped around a circle.
This tutorial will introduce you to working with Path Type, help you understand the difference between open and closed paths and walk you through how to wrap text around a circle. You will learn the tricks to add text to both the top and the bottom of the circle and have it read and align correctly.
Understanding Type on a Path.
Type on a path’s purpose is to follow a path. You can add it to both open paths and closed shapes (but the process differs slightly).
Using Path Type on an Open Path
An example of an open path would be a curved line where you have a distinct start point and end point.
To add type to the path we can select our regular Type tool and as we move it over the path it will detect that it is over an open path and change to the Type on Path tool. The Type tool keyboard shortcut is “t”. Simply click on the path and Illustrator will add some Lorem Ipsum, and you will be able to see the type following the path. You can select the lorem ipsum and replace that placeholder text with words of your own.
It is important to understand the various controls on your path type.
Start Bracket & In Port: Clicking and dragging the start bracket (the line not the square in port – which is tricky because they are small and close together) will allow you to move the start point of the text. The little box attached to the bracket (the inport) will allow you to feed text continuing from either an area type box or other path text. Notice that the End Port now shows a plus sign this means that there is text that is not showing.
Middle Bracket: The middle bracket will also allow you to move your text along the path but… its real power is the ability to flip the type to the other side of the path – why would you want upside text you ask – you will see when we put the text around the circle.
End Bracket & Outport: The end bracket allows you to move the end point of your text – if some of your text is cut off then dragging the end bracket to the right will reveal more text. The out port would allow you to feed text to another text box or path.
Closed Paths vs Open Paths
An open path has a distinct start point and end point and is essentially a line segment. A closed path is a shape, be it a square, circle, star, or hand-drawn freeform shape. What is important is that the line is continuous without a start or end point. Shapes made with the shape tools (except the line) will always be closed unless we do something to them along the way. It is more common to end up with unclosed shapes when hand-drawing.
Using Path Type on a Closed Shape
For using type on a closed path, the big difference is simply that you have to actually start by selecting the Type on a Path tool. If we started with the regular type tool like we did on the open path example above we would run into a problem as when you move the regular type tool over a closed shape it turns into the Area Type tool and wants to let you fill that shape with text. Cool! but not what we are going for at the moment.
How to Wrap Text Around a Circle
- Draw the Circle: Select the ellipse tool and click and drag while holding down the shift tool to constrain the shape to the same height and width. You can also select the Ellipse tool and click the artboard and enter an equal height and width in the Ellipse dialog box.
- Make a Copy: Select the circle and Alt + drag (Windows) | Opt + Drag (Mac) to make a copy – position it out of the way we are going to need it later.
- Type on a Path tool: Select the Type on a Path tool from the toolbar
- Add the Top Text: Click on the circle where you want the wording on the top of the circle to start. The colour and stroke of the circle will disappear and you will get a bunch of lorem ipsum text around the circle. Block select (place your Type on a Path cursor at the beginning of the text and drag till it is all showing the highlight colour and replace with the words you want to use on the top of your crest and then choose a font, adjust the size and make any other style choices. Tip: I usually bring up my rulers Ctrl + R (windows) | Cmd + R (Mac) and drag out a guide so I can position the path type to be level at the top of the circle. I also grab the bracket next to the outport and drag it around to the end of my text (it just makes things neater and easier to adjust if we have to tweak anything later.
- Lock the Circle: We are going to lock this circle Ctrl + 2 (Windows) | Cmd + 2 (Mac) so it doesn’t interfere wtih the next steps.
- Position the 2nd Circle: Position the copy of the circle we made in step 2 over the original circle.
- Adding the Bottom Type: Select the Type on a Path tool and click on the bottom left of the circle. Illustrator will insert lorem ipsum that flows around the circle starting at the insertion point. Select this text and replace it with the words you want to use. Drag the end port around so it is at the end of your text. then use the middle bracket to position the text at the bottom of the circle (and yes… it will be upside down at this point).
- Righting the Text: Now we need to flip the text right-side up. Grab the middle bracket and drag upwards until the text flips into the circle’s center. Don’t panic if part of your text disappears. The area for the text is a little smaller on the inside of the circle so some of the text will be hidden by the overflow. Simply grab the end bracket and drag it to the right till all your text shows. Now the text reads in the right direction.
- Using Type on a Path tool options: In this step, we need to move the text back to the outside of the circle. Select the text and open the Path Type Tool Panel by double-clicking the tool in the toolbox. Then, Click on the Align to Path dropdown and choose Ascender and then click the OK button. This will align the top of your text to the outside of the circle. You can leave the Effect set to Rainbow as the default is what we want.
- Us the middle brackets to align the text: Now we have to center the text horizontally. First, select the middle bracket and drag it toward the center of the circle, when the middle bracket is directly below the center point of the circle you will see a line highlight and you can release the mouse. If you don’t see the line check that your smart guides are enabled by choosing View > Smart Guides and making sure there is a checkmark next to that option.
- Baseline Shift: Now we are going to adjust the space between the top of the type and the circle so both the top and bottom text are on the same line. Ctrl + T (windows) | Cmd + T (mac) to bring up the character panel (or you can expand the character panel in the properties panel by clicking the 3 dots at the bottom right).
Type on a Path Effects
Curious about the other effect options in the Type on a Path Panel? In addition to the Rainbow effect, there is Skew, 3D Ribbon, Stair Step & Gravity. 
Tips for Making Graphics with Concentric Shapes
Tip 1: Build on a Separate Art Board
When I build a graphic like the “Quoth the Raven” crest. I make sure to build it on a separate artboard even when the final graphic is going to be part of a larger image. This way, as I make the many concentric elements that make up the graphic I can use my horizontal and vertical align options to quickly bring my illustration back under control if something got moved out-of-place by mistake. For example, in the image below I would lock any object that was not one of the concentric circles and then I would use the align options to quickly return everything to its perfect place.
Tip 2: Use Offset Path Options to Make All Additional Circles
Using this method will give you a lot more precision than just eye-balling the circles and it is faster than using the ellipse tool dialog box for the subsequent circles. For example, I am going to make a crest starting with a circle at 800 px. I would select the ellipse tool and click on the artboard and enter 800 for height and 800 for width to get a perfect 800 px circle.
But the crest has a whole bunch of inner circles and for that, I select the first circle and choose Offset Path from either the Quick Actions section of the Properties panel or from the menu choose Object > Path > Offset Path and then enter a negative value ie – 8 for example, then select that circle and repeat the process to make the next smallest circle. In the example below I did multiple negative offsets (-8, -6, -120, -8) which sets up a base crest design nicely. All I would need to do to continue would be to select each circle and change the colour.
Before you go
You now have a good understanding of how path type works and the skills to wrap text around a circle and have the bottom text read correctly from left to right. Check out a related tutorial that shows you how to text wrap using area type and how to convert text case without retyping.
I hope this tutorial and associated tips help you make all sorts of crests, logos and signage! If you found this useful drop a comment – I would love to hear from you.
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