Lab #14 Reflection

This lab required us to utilize text in adobe illustrator. Given specific directions, I had to play around with text options and settings in many different ways. The first task was to make a word in 30 point sans-serif bold text, scaled horizontally 200 percent and tracked to -100. Of course most of this was in the settings that I had to change. Except, the sans-serif text was a little hard for me to identify. I still don't entirely get the whole idea behind sans-serif and what it means. At least I got it done right? The next task was to make a short word and kern only two of the letters, along with making the text color grey. Kern is basically spacing between two letters in a text. Making it a high value would increase the space between two letters and making it a high negative value would decrease the space between them. For it to take effect they would need to be high numbers like 100 and above or so. I noticed that upon playing around with it. The next task was to make two 60 point letters which I then converted to outlines. Then I changed one of the letter shapes by dragging points. I turned off fill and put a black stroke. The example showed a T and L which I mimicked to look exactly the same. It wasn't too hard but adjusting it couldn't be harder. Next was a really easy step which required me to copy the outlines of the two letters and combine them into one shape using the pathfinder panel. It made the T and the L intersect with the L being over the T. The last task of this lab was to make a wavy path with the pen tool and put some text on it. It also said to kern the worst letter spacing in that type. Basically all I did was make a wavy line using the pen tool and then I used the text tool to put some text on it that says "type on a wavy path". I then kerned it using the same method I did for the second task which increases or decreases the space between two letters in a text but instead I did it to the words apart. This was simple enough and we had to make another version of the task we did in this lab but with our own thoughts using the skills earned. I basically did the same thing I explained with different text and fonts, different letters, etc. A web designer would need these skills to be successful because it would allow them to utilize their text in different ways so they can be more creative with whatever they do. It could also allow them to make more detailed thing in illustrator including logos and other things that would be used for visual presentation.