Convert Your Text To Grass Using Illustrator

Green is the buzz these days and what better way for your brand or headlines to exude eco-friendliness than by turning them to grass? Add excitement to your magazine ads, postcard prints or posters by using this effect on your headlines with Adobe Illustrator. Simply follow the instructions below and you will be able to do this on your own styled text, titles and headlines. So go ahead and start reading carefully these instructions one by one.

  1. With a new document open in Adoble Illustrator, simply type up your title using the type tool (Shortcut T). Make sure you use a fairly thick type font style, that is solid. Sans serif fonts are recommended here, such as Arial or Verdana. But of course, use any font style that you see fit.
  2. Go to Object -> Expand so that you can easily edit your text as a shape.
  3. Also, ungroup the text by right clicking on them and selecting ÒUngroupÓ in the context menu.
  4. Make a backup of our text by pressing CTR+C and CTRL+V. Hide this or just move this somewhere out of the way in your Art Board for now.
  5. Now, with the original text selected go to Effects -> Sketch -> Notepaper.
  6. Use a 25 value image balance, 10 graininess and 11 relief value as well
  7. First Rasterize the object by going to Object -> Rasterize. Be sure to select a high resolution option, and select a transparent background.
  8. Now, go to Object -> Live Trace -> Tracing Options.
  9. In the tracing options, change the mode to grayscale, add max colors of 11, a minimum area of 2 px and check the checkbox to ÒIgnore white.Ó Once done click on trace.
  10. Now, if you got some fairly large black areas popping up, just erase them using the eraser tool. Otherwise you are ok.
  11. We will now turn this into grass colored text. Simply go to the gradient panel and apply a gradient color. Use a dark green to light green color of course to simulate your grass.
  12. Next, go to Effects -> Distort and transform -> Pucker and Bloat. Adjust the value for this as necessary to achieve the grass look effect that you need. Just tick on the Preview tick box to see the value’s effect.
  13. Great! Now select the backup we did earlier of our original text. Duplicate this again and save the duplicate as a backup. Change the originalÕs color to a dark brown soil color and then go to Effects -> Stylize -> Feather. Apply a 3 pixel feather. Move this appropriately at the back of your text.
  14. Create a background for your text by selecting the rectangle tool and drawing a large rectangle over your document. Send the rectangle to the back and color it with a creative gradient color appropriate for your grass.
  15. Finally, if you like, you can also use a shadow for your grass text. Do this by using our other duplicate earlier. Turn its fill to black and then go to Effects -> Blur -> Gaussian blur. Use large value for the blur and press okay. Position this at the back of the text, but in front of our rectangle background.
  16. Great! Now you have a good looking grass text with a background and shadow. Simply add other accents as you see fit. In the Symbols window, you should see some garden and flower shapes that might be useful.
  17. Congratulations! Now you know how to create a unique looking grass style texture effect for your text elements. Convert any kind of text title to this easily as long as you follow these instructions. Good Luck!
Armand Niculescu

Armand Niculescu

Senior Full-stack developer and graphic designer with over 25 years of experience, Armand took on many challenges, from coding to project management and marketing.