How to create an Editable Frozen Text Effect in Adobe Illustrator

Frozen text effect in Adobe Illustrator. Buy now

My blood runs cold, my dear friends because today we are going to design a bloody-amazing text effect in Adobe Illustrator. I will show you how to add a layer by layer the ice-crust on your text so it will look frozen.

It looks deliciously good as for editable vector text effect, not as delicious as this candy style, but 2 years ago I wouldn’t believe it can be created in Adobe Illustrator — so gorgeously realistic it is.

This frosty text can be a huge asset if you are designing a New Year Sale banner or looking for some options in packaging design. It can be yours for only 2$ from Vitorials collection of the text effects. You can find similar styles on Envato including this epic collection of Christmas Text Effects.

But today, we will be designing this frosty text effect in Adobe Illustrator for absolutely free. Get your Adobe Illustrator installation up and ready and let’s immerse into the cooool tutorial.

First Step. Download required free assets

For this tutorial we need two assets:

1. Grunge brushes set from Mattocks Shuler
2. Font: Berlin Fb Bold

Second Step. Start with a new Document

Bring up a new document panel and set a canvas size to 1380x980px.

Cover it with the rectangle using the Rectangle Tool (M). Give it a gradient and change the spot colors to:

Set a gradient Radial and make sure the Bondi Blue color is inside the circle of your gradient.

Third Step. Text

Grab a Type tool type your word. In my case it’s FROZEN in all capitals with the 280pt size and Font family of Berlin FB Bold.

Step Four. Pattern

Brushes

The grunge pattern we will be using for the effect of the snow crust.

I will show you how to create your texture by playing with the brushes set from Mattocks Shuler. They are free and can be used in all types of projects.

Once we’ve downloaded the set, we need to locate it through the Brushes Panel ( F5 or head over to the Windows/Brushes).

On the Brushes panel head over to the bottom left corner to open the dropdown menu. On the bottom of the menu select the option “Other Libraries” and locate the Brushes set you’ve just downloaded.

Now you can access the set of ten brushes.

Mask & Texture

Create a 210×250 px rectangle and delete the fill. Grab the Brush tool(B) and select the brush #15 from the set. Make sure your stroke has a #58C7ED color and 2pt of weight. Draw a line in the middle of this rectangle.

Expand the appearance ( Object/Expand Appearance) and select the Eraser ( Shift+E) to clean up the shape. You will get the nice texture of our ice-crust's pattern.

Place the rectangle on to top of the texture by using the shortcut Ctr+] (make sure they are sharing the same layer). Select both of them by drawing the marque around with the Selection Tool and hit a right mouse button to bring up the context menu. Select the Make clipping mask to put the texture inside the rectangle.

Pattern

The last step is to create a pattern from this texture. Head over to the Object/Pattern/Make.

Resize it to fit the pattern frame and click Done to save it on the Swatches Panel.

Step Five. Appearance Panel

Fill #1

Select the text. Head over to Appearance panel ( Windows/Appearance) and click the tiny "Add a New Fill" button.

Set the color to #A2DDF8. Add two effects:

• Roughen:
• Size: 2.5px

• Inner Glow:
• Opacity: 80%

Fill #2

Add a new fill by click an icon on the Appearance Panel. Make sure it’s on top of the previous one. Set the color to #25A9E0. Reduce the Opacity to 60% by clicking the Opacity link on the bottom of the color icon.

Add three effects:

• Offset Path (to open the drop-down menu with the effects click on the tiny fx icon next to the add a new fill icon on the bottom-left of the Appearance Panel ):

• Roughen:
• Feather:

Fill #3. Pattern Fill

Add a new fill on top of the fill #2 and apply a pattern to it by clicking on the pattern icon on the Swatches panel.

Adjust the Opacity of this fill to 70% and set the Blending Mode to Overlay.

Add three effects:

• Offset Path:
• Roughen:
• Transform (again under fx button):

Fill #4. White Fill

Add a new fill and make it white (#000). Adjust the Opacity to 80% and set the Blending Mode to Overly.

Add two effects:

• Offset Path:
• Transform: Move
• Feather:

New Stroke

Add a new stroke by clicking the hollow icon next to the Add a New Fill icon.

Increase the stroke weight to 3px and make it white.

Add three effects:

• Transform:
• Feather:
• Gaussian Blur:

Global Effect

To apply one effect globally we need to select the Type on the very top of the Appearance Panel. Apply an Inner Glow Effect :

• Blending Mode = Normal
• Blur: 24px

That is it. You got to the end of this tutorial and hope didn’t loose your sanity:) I sure you got some value from this tut and ready to boost your design with amazing text effects. Go and check up more of my text effect tutorials as well as ready-to-use text effects in my store.

Subscribe to the weekly newsletter:

Originally published at https://vitorials.net.