Cutting "pixels" out of text in Illustrator

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 7, 2020
4 replies
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I want to design a logo where pixels fly out of a text. I have problems with cutting out the pixels from the text. I made a brush that scatters little squares. I scattered white squares in front of black text and made a group of the squares. Then I tried to use pathfinder tools to cut those out from the text. It does not work. Is the problem that you simply can't cut out parts from text, only from other objects?

I can make this effect with photoshop, but I don't like how it looks after I change it in to vectors in Illustrator. It has to look like pixels.

How would You do it?

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Correct answer Ton Frederiks

You could make a Symbol from single square at the size of your "pixel".

Use the Symbol Sprayer Tool (Shift S) to spray pixels above your text.

Select both the text and the pixels and Alt click on the Minus Front in the Pathfinder panel.

This will make a Compound shape, your text stays editable and the sprayed pixels can still be modified.

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

Liisperi,

"Yes, thats true."

In that case, I believe you have "done with a double set" by copying the set of sprayed symbols, then left the original set behind the Compound Shape (and release/recopy if editing is needed).

Myra Ferguson

Community Expert

Convert the text to outlines by selecting the text and going to Type > Create Outlines. It becomes an object (which is uneditable as text after conversion), and then you can use Pathfinder.