How do I

[clbaft]

Hi all.

This is my first time altering letters for a wordmark. As you can see directly below, letters that were made by Create Outlines and not changed have a really smooth curve - it looks great.

However for the letters I've edited

It's even more obvious when zoomed out

Does anyone have any tips for improving this? I've tried the smoothing tool but it didn't do a huge amount. As a logo, it will be quite small and I'm concerned it looks jagged and also clearly different to the other letters. Thanks in advance

 

[Tina_Irvine]

Hi @clbaft,

The bottom letter almost looks rasterized. Is there a chance that you have rasterized it by mistake (especially if it's different than the other letters)? If it's text that has been outlined only, it should retain its smoothness.

[clbaft]

Hi Tina

Nope, it's still vector. It's just an outlined letter that i've altered with the pen tool etc (see the anchor points)

It might be the quality of the screenshot when zoomed out. It's possible I'm overthinking it and it won't be that bad when I export it, because tbh it looks better in the screencap than it does on my screen 😅 and I just noticed that I didn't finish putting a title on this post, oops!

[Tina_Irvine]

No problem 😊 For further troubleshooting options, you could try scaling the "S" larger and smaller. It could just be what's showing on your monitor at certain zoom percentages, as you mentioned. Bringing the questionable letter(s) into more apps, might also show the letter(s) sharp/clear. Make sure you're viewing at 100% if you're not in a vector app, though. If you have a desktop printer nearby, you can always test print as well. Since it's still vector, you should be fine 😊

[Bobby Henderson]

It's difficult to suggest a solution without knowing how the intended end result should look. When you edited the letters did you delete anchor points on the path?

Most fonts, at least ones that are well authored, will have the minimum number of anchor points needed to define the path. The number of anchor points will vary based on whether the fonts use TrueType quadratic B-splines or Postscript-based cubic B-splines. Fonts with Postscript-based outlines tend to have fewer anchor points. However, the trend seems to have shifted in favor of TrueType outlines for various technical reasons.

Anyway, it can be especially tricky to alter letters without the curves and other parts looking wonky afterward. If I have to do something like that I'll do things like keep a copy of the original letter on a layer underneath the one where I'm working to use as a guide. It can help to use the scissors tool to break apart smaller segments of a path and then make alterations without the rest of the path going crazy.

[clbaft]

Fair point. I was trying to alter the S to be a bit more interesting looking, with a thin center stem like in Beatrice Deck. The original font I edited is Sharp Type's Raum which looks fantastic. I don't completely hate where it is in terms of the shape (for a first try anyway), but obviously more practice is in order.

Thanks for the suggestion about the scissor tool! I don't think I've worked with that yet.

[Monika Gause]

A monitor display paths using pixels. Depending on the nature of the curve, it might show. There's no way to change that and most of the time it won't matter either, because it's just a fact of life.

As for printing, I wouldn't worry a lot. If you are printing in offset printing, resolution will be sufficient. Only when printing on some low budget desktop printer you might or might not run into issues

[clbaft]

I see, I did start to notice that it looks fine in some of the images and that it's probably just how it looks on my screen. I primarily work with UIs and logos aren't really my forte so I wasn't sure whether the jaggedness was my fault. Thanks for the info, I feel better about it now 🙂

[Jacob Bugge]

cbaft,

It is indeed different to the original letters. Are they in the same Layer of the same document?

It looks more or less as if the Rasterize Effect is turned on, or Anti-Aliasing is turned off in the Preferences.

The former will hit only the object (or Layer if applied to that), and can be seen in the Appearance palette when the object (or the Layer) is selected

The latter will hit everything.

Is it also happening if you create a new Document and try the same?

I shall ponder and maybe come up with something even sillier.