Continued from Page One

My labels are 2.625 inches wide and 1-inch tall, so in the Transform panel's W: field (for Width) I'll type in 2.625 in, and in the H: or Height field I'll enter 1 in.

The product information page also tells me the margins of the pre-cut label sheets I've ordered, so I need to position my label design relative to those margins so that the design prints correctly on the labels. That's where the X: and Y: fields come in. Illustrator works in two dimensions-horizontal and vertical-with X representing an object's horizontal position relative to the top-left corner of the page (artboard in Illustrator parlance) and the Y denoting the object's vertical position. It's important to note that the vertical position, the Y coordinate, is not relative to the top-left corner of the artboard; it actually begins at the bottom-left corner. Therefore a value of 0 in puts the object's selected reference point at the bottom-right corner of the artboard. (Yes, it is peculiar and a little difficult to get your mind around at first.)

Knowing that the X: and Y: fields control the positioning of my object-specifically, of the selected top-left corner reference point-I can easily set the margins. According to the WL-875 product page, the label sheet's left margin is 0.1875 inches (a little less than a quarter of an inch). Entering 0.1875 in into the X: (horizontal positioning) field and pressing Return/Enter precisely aligns my rectangle's left edge to the margin and thus to the left edge of the pre-cut labels on which I'll print the design.

For the vertical positioning I have to take an extra step. The top margin of the label sheets is 0.5-inches-a straight forward half an inch-but because Illustrator measures vertical coordinates relative to the bottom of the artboard rather than the top, entering 0.5 in in the Y: field will put my rectangle at the bottom of the page rather than at the top where I want it. I know that the label sheets are standard 8.5 x 11-inch American letter-sized pages, so I know that subtracting the half-inch top margin from the 11 inch total artboard height means that I must vertically position my rectangle's top-left corner at 10.5-inches. Entering 10.5 in in the Y: field and pressing Enter/Return does the trick.
My rectangle-and yours-is now exactly the right dimensions and in exactly the right place.

5. Now it's time to color the rectangle. On the Window menu choose Swatches to open the Swatches panel and Color to open the Color panel (see Figure 8). The Swatches panel contains predefined color swatches; click on one to instantly color either the fill or stroke (outline) of your rectangle with that color. Which you color, the fill or stroke, is determined on the Color panel

To the left on the Color panel are representations of the current fill and stroke colors. The fill is the solid color square and the stroke the hollow square. As you can see, they appear to be stacked atop one another-in the figure the fill is above or in front of the stroke; whichever is in front is the one that will be colored when you click a swatch on the Swatches panel. Click the lower or back representation to bring it forward, sending the other to the back. For example, to color the stroke of your rectangle, click the stroke representation on the Colors panel to bring it forward, and then select a swatch color on the Swatches panel. To change the fill color, make sure the solid square is foremost, and then choose a color swatch. You can also use the ramp at the bottom of the Color panel to visually pick a color from the spectrum, or the sliding color mixers above it to mix up a perfect color.

For now, bring the fill square to the front and, on the Swatches panel, select the black color swatch (fourth from the left on the top row) to fill the rectangle black. Even though you probably can't see it, the rectangle almost certainly has a black stroke, which can unnecessarily add to the height and width of the rectangle. Let's remove the stroke color entirely by selecting the very first swatch on the Swatches panel, a white block with a red line through it (the None swatch). When you select that you should see that the Color panel stroke color representation adopts the line through it-there is no color there, and the stroke is turned off.

Note: If you do not want a background color in your label design, it's very important that you still create, position, and size the background rectangle. Just set both the fill and stroke to the None color swatch, effectively turning the rectangle invisible but not deleting or omitting it. Filled or not, that rectangle will be essential to your ability to easily replicate the one design to fill up the page.

6. Once you're happy with the background rectangle, press CTRL+2 on Windows or CMD+2 on the Mac, which will lock the rectangle. When the rectangle is successfully locked you will not be able to select it or change its size or color. Locking an object prevents accidental repositioning and makes it much easier to work with other objects placed on top of the first.

7. Ready to begin typing the address? Sure, we could jump to drawing artwork or importing a picture of the grandkids or family pet, but the primary purpose of a return address label is to provide an obvious, readable return address to the addressee and postal workers. Thus we must attend to the primary purpose of the design first, and then work the second purpose-self-expression-around the first

From the Tools panel select the Type tool, which looks like a big T. If you have trouble finding it you can also just press T on your keyboard to activate the Type tool. There are several kinds of text objects you can create in Illustrator including point type, area type, and type on a path. Explaining the differences between them, when and how to use one or the other, would take a lot more space than I have in this article (see the sidebar "Check This Out" for an excellent resource that walks you through this and many other cool topics as it helps you master the beauty and flexibility of Adobe Illustrator artwork). For now, we'll stick with point type-the easiest and fastest kind to work with for this type of project

With the Type tool click and release the left mouse button once somewhere within the background rectangle. Now, type the first line of your return address label, which is probably your name. At the end of the first line press Enter/Return, and type the next line. Keep going until you have the complete address information you'd like on your label. If you want all your address information on one line, you're certainly welcome to do that, too as long as it can all fit within the width of the return address label (with a little empty space on either side).
At this point, don't worry about the typeface (font) or style. You just want to get the information down; styling comes next.

If you can't see the text at all, however, which is entirely possible because Illustrator makes text black by default and, if you followed my instruction, you have a black background rectangle, change the type color. Press CTRL+A/CMD+A to select all of the text you've typed so far and return to the Color panel. On the Color panel make sure the fill color representation is in front, and then choose a different color from the Swatches panel (remember to choose a color that contrasts well to the background color). To deselect the highlighted text simply press the Left or Right arrow key on your keyboard until you're back at the end of the text.

Finish typing the address information and then switch to the black arrow Selection Tool at the top of the Tools panel. When you do that, the text you just typed will become outlined with a selection box and can be moved around with the Selection Tool for precise positioning.

8. On the Window menu navigate to the Type submenu and choose Character to open the Character panel. Here is where you set the font, style, and size of your address information (see Figure 9). The first field on the Character panel is the Font Family field; click the arrow on the right to dropdown a list of all the fonts currently installed on your system. Some fonts, like Arial or Times New Roman, also have different styles like Regular (not bold, not italic), Bold, Italic, and Bold-Italic. It's in the second dropdown field that you'll find these or other styles available within the font family you choose.

Beneath the Font Style field is the Font Size field where you set the size of your text by choosing a preset from the dropdown menu, using the arrows on the left to increase or decrease size in whole point increments, or by typing into the field a specific value. To the right of the Font Size field is the Leading field, which controls the vertical distance between your lines of text using the same means-a dropdown menu, incremental arrows, and values manually typed in. For this project don't worry about the bottom two fields, Kerning and Tracking.

As long as your address information remains selected with either the Selection Tool or the Type Tool, changes you make in the Character panel will immediately apply to that text. Using the Font Family, Font Style, Font Size, and Leading fields, style your address the way you'd like using any font on your computer. Feel free to experiment and tweak!

Remember to make the return address very readable. You are zoomed in and viewing the label onscreen much larger than it will actually print, so you must remember to make the text large enough to be legible when printed. On a light background, with a crisp-edged, easily readable font, the minimum size should be 8 pts. On a dark background the same kind of font should be set no smaller than 10 pts. If you're using a font with a script, handwritten, or funky look, try to stick within the 12-16 pts size range.

For my Halloween-themed return address labels I chose the font Bones, which, despite its letters being comprised of cartoon bones, is remarkably readable at 12 pts (see the sidebar "Check This Out" for the address to hundreds of free Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Valentine's Day fonts you can download and use in your designs). For this particular return address label I opted to leave out the sender's name and only include the address, giving me more room for decoration

Right about now you're probably asking yourself two questions: Where do I get these fonts? And: Once I have a symbol font installed, how can I pick from the available symbols?
The answer to the first question is easy: there are links to more than 500 free fonts-including all the ones I used in the Halloween and Valentine's Day labels-in the "Check This Out" sidebar. You can download any or all of them for free. Once you've downloaded and unzipped them, install them in your system fonts folder. On Windows that's C:\Window\Fonts, and on Mac in Harddrive/Library/Fonts. Note: Close Illustrator before you install the fonts, and then relaunch it after. Although Illustrator will usually detect and use fonts newly installed while Illustrator was running, some versions won't recognize the new fonts until the application has been restarted.

In order to answer the second question-once I have a symbol font installed, how can I pick from the available symbols-allow me to present another Illustrator panel, the Glyphs panel (see Figure 11). Access it from the Window > Type menu. "Glyph" is the correct term for any single character or symbol in a language or font, and the Glyphs panel provides instant access to every glyph in any installed font. Choose the font family and style from the dropdown menus at the bottom of the Glyphs panel, and the grid will fill with the glyphs present in that font. With normal, readable fonts, you'll see all the letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and other glyphs, and when viewing symbol fonts like Helloween, you'll see all the symbols. The two mountain-like buttons next to the Font Style field zoom the grid view out or in, showing more glyphs or greater detail.

Inserting particular characters is just as easy as viewing them.

1. Switch to the Type tool.

2. Click and release on the artboard (page) or pasteboard (the area around the printable page) to begin a text object, which will then enable you to type into the text object.

3. Instead of typing, however, go to the Glyphs panel and double-click the glyph you'd like to use; it will be inserted into your text object at the point of the cursor. To insert another glyph immediately after first, double-click that other glyph.

Ta da! Instant clipart that behaves like text-you format its size and style on the Character panel-and can be colored instantly with the Swatches and Color panels.

Odds are, you already have some symbol fonts installed on your computer. Although your fonts may vary, Windows users might find Wingdings, Webdings, and Marlett already on hand, and Mac users should look for Zapf Dingbats and Webdings.

Remember: You can reselect text-the address, inserted glyphs, any text-with the Selection Tool at any time and continue to make changes. If you find a typo and want to fix it, choose the Type tool and carefully click it at the baseline, the imaginary line running directly beneath the text, to enter and edit previously created text.

Although there are hundreds of thousands of excellent glyphs available to you from symbol fonts, such glyphs must be, by their nature as parts of a font, fairly simple drawings. They cannot contain multiple color or shades (although you can draw in those bits in Illustrator if you want to), nor can they be photorealistic. Of course, they probably won't contain pictures of your pet, grandchildren, or hobbies. That's where importing or placing comes in.

You can place into Illustrator all the popular photographic image formats such as JPG, GIF, TIFF, PNG, BMP, PSD, and PDF, and all the common clipart file types like EPS, WMF, EMF, PCX, AI, and PDF. All you have to do is choose Place from the File menu, navigate to the picture or clipart file on your computer, select it, and click the Place button. Illustrator will place the image on your artboard, ready to be moved or resized with the Selection Tool or Transform panel.

In Figure 12 you can see two return address labels I created. The first includes a photograph of my cat, Chloe (the background design I created directly in Illustrator). In the second, for a fictional editing service, I've placed and sized the photo of torn and crumpled paper as the background and also placed a clipart logo I created in another Illustrator .AI document.

Instead of settling for a generic clipart picture of a dog from the mail order return address label printers, why not make your own labels that include your particular dog? How about pictures of your newborn to help announce your joyous news to all your friends, family, and utility companies? Fisherman? I bet you've got a beautiful shot of your boat or big catch that would look spectacular in the top-left corner of your outgoing mail.

Your imagination is the only limit on what photos and clipart you can add to your personalized address labels.