How to Stroke Text in Illustrator
Stroking text in Adobe Illustrator can result in logos that stand out. Exercise control over the stroke's width, style and color to add a bold or subtle stroke to any typeface. You can stroke cursive, serif and san-serif fonts, for example, and then optimize their legibility by manipulating the stroke's settings. Such options can make even the most popular font style look distinct because strokes ultimately increase the weight of a typeface.
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Instructions
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Highlight the text you want to stroke with the Type tool. You can highlight all of the text, a single letter or an entire word. Only an active text selection will be affected. The text you select should be large enough to be complemented by the stroke effect. Applying a stroke effect to type sizes that are 15 points or lower may yield undesirable results.
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Activate the Stroke color box in the Tools panel. Then, identify a suitable color swatch from the Swatches panel and click it to define the stroke color. The color you choose should go well with the type's fill color. For example, text set in navy blue may look stunning after an orange stroke is applied. Consider how the text's fill color interacts with a stroke color to create an appealing combination. Or, choose the text's swatch color to make a font appear bolder than it would without the stroke.
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Adjust the stroke weight in the Strokes panel. Higher numbers result in wider strokes around text while lower numbers produce thinner outlines. Observe how the weight of the stroke impacts the legibility of the font as you make adjustments. Ultra-wide strokes can take up all of the space between letterforms for playful look and thin strokes tend to preserve the original font's integrity.
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