Type on a Circle in Adobe Illustrator

Plenty of logos feature type that surrounds an object. To achieve this effect, it is placed on a circle and this is easy to do using a vector drawing program such as Illustrator.

1. First of all, create a circle. The easiest way is to press L for the ellipse tool and click on the artboard. Enter a measurement for the width and click the word Height to duplicate the width. (I entered 60mm).
   

   Create a Circle

2. Go to your Character palette and set your type options. You can change this later but start with something that will be a suitable size for your circle.
   

   Type Options

3. Select the Type on a Path tool.
   

   Type on a Path Tool

4. I set my Paragraph options to centred and clicking with the Type on a Path Tool shows the circle ready to accept typing. At the bottom of the circle is a single line called the I-beam. We’ll come to this in a moment.
   

   Circle Ready for Type

5. Type your text and it strangely appears at the bottom of the circle, upside-down.
   

   Notice the I-beam

6. Using the Direct Selection Tool (A on your keyboard) click and drag the I-beam to reposition your type. (In the picture above, the I-beam is the vertical line that appears at the end of the word LINE, because my text alignment option was set to centre and this is the centre of my text block.)  It tends to fly about but you will get the hang of this…
   

   Repositioned Type

7. Opt/Alt-drag the I-beam down into the circle and you will create a copy of your type (and path) inside the upper line of type.
   

   Duplicate the Type/Path

8. Select the bottom line type using the Type Tool to highlight it, then go to your Character palette and set a negative value for the baseline shift. You can also do this for the tracking on the letters to pull them into shape.
   

   Adjust the Baseline Shift

9. The two lines of type finished. Once you have this, you can skew and transform your paths if you want. This is a great start for creating perspective-based type on a circle effects…
   

   The Finished Path Type

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