Envelope Distort

Tutorial Details

• Program: Adobe Illustrator CS4.
• Difficulty: Beginner/ 
• Estimated Completion: Half hour

1. Envelope distort is a pretty cool effect you can do in Illustrator for many logo designs, text effects, and other ways to bring your shapes and text in a stylish way. First of all I have an example here with my shapes. Let’s say that is my logo design for now.

2. Now to do an envelope distort, have the object selected (all the object you want to distort), and then go to OBJECT > ENVELOPE DISTORT and then from the menu that slides out you have about 3 different options of envelope distorts that you can use: 
Make with Warp 
Make with Mesh
Make with Top Object

3. The envelope warp option is where you can already choose an pre-made style in Illustrator. The dialog box you see here enables you to control the style in more detail. Play around with it.

4. Result with “Make with Warp”.

5. You can grab anchor points after you do that and adjust the warp on your own.

6. And here is my final result after anchor point adjustment.

7. Envelope mesh option is kind of like what you can do with a 3D program if you have experience in 3D. However in Illustrator it’s an mesh for 2D flat plain surfaces. The dialog box here enables you to create column and rows like a table or spreadsheet. You then take the anchor points and move it around at your own creativity.

8. “Make with object on top” is the last option you have, where you can create a distortion based on the object that is laid out on top.

9. Viola! Created it using a circle object on top of my object underneath.

10. Now in the same menu, there is an option called EDIT CONTENTS. This allows you to go back and expose the content underneath of your distortion and move the object around for your liking.

11. So again, I grab my anchor points just like the other envelope options, and adjust the anchor points respectively.

12. Now there is another menu option under the envelope distort option called expand. This allows you to expand the object as an editable object. After you EXPAND the object, make sure to UNGROUP the object to make individual objects selectable. (OR you can just use the white arrow tool and delete.) You can now go in and delete or adjust anchor points as you wish after the distortion was applied.

13. Complete result after expanding the distorted object.