How to Create a Custom Water Font In Less Than an Hour

Tutorial Details: Custom Water Font

Program: Adobe Illustrator CS6-CC
Difficulty: Intermediate
Topics Covered: Blend Tool, Pencil Tool, Appearance Tool, Custom Brushes
Estimated Completion Time: 45 Minutes

Final Image

How to create a custom water font in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a refreshing font style! We’ll base this water font on your handwriting or a brush font. Then, we’ll create custom brushes, play with blending modes, explore blended shapes, use gradients, and use vector effects—all in the Appearance panel. Let’s get started!

Step 1

To start creating your water font, choose a blue or turquoise hue for your background. Then, use the Rectangle Tool (M) to draw a large rectangle over the entirety of your artboard. Choose a brush script you like for the word you’ll be “liquefying”. I chose the font Alex Brush since it lends itself wonderfully to watery text.

Water font tutorial

Step 2

There are two methods I like to use when it comes to creating a flowing water font. Let’s start with the first. For the first method, draw a circle with the Ellipse Tool (L) at the top of your first letter (or at one of the thicker points if you’re using an alternate font).

Rotate the circle so its top and bottom anchor points line up with the direction of the letter (see below). Using the Direct Selection Tool (A), pull the bottom anchor point downward along the length of the letter’s side. In the case below, it’s the W’s first leg.

Water font tutorial

Step 3

Use the Convert Anchor Point Tool (Shift-C) to bring the end of the elongated circle into a point. Repeat Steps 2-3 for the other legs of the W. For curved portions of letters, start with a circle again at the thickest part of the letter’s stroke and pull the bottom anchor point down, with the direct Selection Tool, to the bottom of the letter (initially ignoring the curve, as seen below).

Then, adjust the handles of the bottom point so the shape curves in accordance with the letter. You’ll have to manipulate the handles of the other points as well, in order to get the right curve. (This depends on your letter and font.) If the handles don’t appear, use the Convert Anchor Point Tool to convert it into a curving point. Do this by clicking on it once or twice. You’ll notice anchor handles pop out immediately if it was previously a point.

Water font tutorial

Step 4

As I mentioned in Step 2, there are two methods I like to use for my water font. The first was covered in Steps 2-3, and we’ll go over the second method now.

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The second method starts with a circle drawn with the Ellipse Tool. Use the Direct Selection Tool and pull the right anchor point to the right of the picture plane. Make sure to bring its end to a point by using the Convert Anchor Point Tool.

The size of your circle and final shape (as seen below) will depend on how large of strokes you’ll need to draw for your lettering. A good guide for this is to draw the circle over your text (as we did in Step 2) to gauge size.

Water font tutorial

Step 5

Select the new shape made in Step 4, and in the Brushes panel, go to Options and hit Make New Brush. Select Art Brush and the panel seen below should pop up. These should be the default options. Hit OK. You now have a custom art brush ready to be used in the next step.

design water alphabet

Step 6

Using the Paintbrush Tool (B), trace your word’s letters. In the case seen below, I’ve made sure my strokes begin at the thicker points of each letter and follow them accordingly. There are 12 strokes total for my word “water”. Once satisfied, go to Object>Expand Appearance in order to expand the paintbrush strokes into objects.

How to make water-themed alphabet

Step 7

Select each expanded shape and apply a Linear Gradient, using the Gradient Tool (G), that goes from White at 100% Opacity to White at 0% Opacity. Adjust the angle of the gradient with the Gradient Tool so the opaque white is concentrated at the thickest part of the shape and the transparent color at the thinnest.

how to make a water-themed font

Step 8

Repeat Step 6‘s process for all of the shapes within your word.

water-inspired font

Step 9

Let’s make the background a little more interesting. Using the Gradient Tool and Gradient Palette , apply a Radial Gradient to the rectangle drawn in Step 1. This one goes from Dark Teal (R1, G147, B164) to Teal (R51, G204, B204). With the Gradient Tool, adjust the shape of the radial gradient so that it’s oblong and centered around your text.

Step 10

In order to make it a striped background, use the Line Segment Tool (\) to draw a vertical line on the left side of the artboard. Copy (Control-C) and Paste (Control-V) this line and move it to the right side of the artboard.

Align both lines with each other by selecting them and hitting any of the Vertical Align options in the Align panel (the three options to the right in the top row). Once aligned, select both and use the Blend Tool (W) to apply a blend of 130 Steps or so (this depends on how many stripes you’d like in your background).

Water font tutorial

Step 11

Now that the background has been sorted (Steps 10-11), let’s get back to the main text. Group (Control-G) together your letter components and Copy and Paste them. Hide the original group in the Layers panel, as you won’t need it at this time.

Ungroup (this was done just for organization’s sake), Select the first part of the first letter (see below for the first leg of the W). Go to Object>Path>Offset Path and input -2px or -4px, depending on how small you’d like the offset shape to be.

Water font tutorial

Step 12

I’ve isolated the leg of the W from Step 10 so this process is easier to see. Change the fill color to the Dark Teal from Step 8. Reduce the Opacity of the larger shape to 0% in the Transparency panel.

Select both shapes and use the Blend Tool to create a smooth blend of 20 Steps. Select your newly made Blend Group and reduce its overall Opacity to 40% and Blend Mode to Color Burn in the Transparency panel.

water font

Step 13

Repeat the process of offsetting shapes from Step 10 and the entire process of Step 11 on the rest of your text objects. Group these shapes together and unhide the text group from Step 10 in the Layers panel.

water font tutorial

Step 14

In order to add additional highlights to the text as seen in the image in Step 12, Copy and Paste each leg and curved component of your letters, and apply a Radial Gradient with the Gradient Tool to the lower curves (see below) going from white at 100% Opacity to white at 0% Opacity.

Repeat on the other letters where applicable (anything with curved shapes on the bottom). In the case of my text, I added seven additional gradient shapes. Group these extra shapes together.

water vector

Step 15

The next two steps involve three layers of additional text effects. Copy and Paste your text and Unite the copied text in the Pathfinder panel. Set the fill color to Null and the stroke color to Dark Teal (Step 10).

In the Stroke panel, set the weight to 1pt and the cap and corner to Rounded. Select the outlined text and go to Effect>Blur>Radial Blur. Set the Amount to 9, Blur Method to Spin, and Quality to Best. This layer will be set above the other three groups that make up your text (see 1. below).

water font tutorial

Step 16

For the second layer Paste the United text again and set the stroke color to null and the fill color to a Linear Gradient going from Dark Teal at 100% to Dark Teal at 0%. In the Gradient panel, set the angle to -90°. In the Transparency panel, set the Opacity to 50% and the Blend Mode to Color Dodge.