Creating Easy Distressed Text in Illustrator

The distressed and grunge looks are hot these days. This quick tutorial will show you just how easy it is to create this effect on text in Illustrator.Let’s begin with some text. You can add small and simple design elements if you would like. Stay away from anything too complex.

We have our starting point, we need to gather our tools. Make sure that your Brushes Palette is open. (You can open the palette by going to Window > Brushes.) Now, go open a the Artistic-ChalkCharcoalPencil Brush Library by going to Window > Brush Libraries > Artistic-ChalkCharcoalPencil as shown below.Next, take your pen tool and draw a few lines through the text at various angles. Select a stroke color from you Color Palette, making sure that your stroke color is different than the text and any design elements you are using.Apply one of the brushes from the new Brush Library to all of your lines. I am using the top brush called “Chalk”.Now select the text and the brush strokes and expand it all by going to Object > Expand. Once the artwork has been expanded, we want to merge it all together. Open your Pathfinder Palette by going to Window > Pathfinder. With the expanded artwork selected, click on the Merge Icon in you Pathfinder Palette.Now, select the color of your brush strokes from the swatches in your Color Palette. Once the color appropriate color appears as your Fill Color, select all of the strokes by simply going to Select > Same > Fill Color. This will select all of the little shapes created by you brush strokes. With the shapes selected click the delete key on your keyboard or select the No Fill swatch from the Color Palette.Removing the color from those spots around the design creates the distressed/grunge look we are going for.