Emboss Text Effect

One of my dear friends, Bert Monroy, has a wonderful podcast on Revision3 called Pixel Perfect. Some
of you may remember that I've appeared as a guest on Bert's show in the past, where I've spoken about
using Illustrator and symbols, 3D, animation, and the awesome Live Paint feature.

Recently, Bert did an episode on how to create a license plate in Photoshop. As always, the techniques
that Bert teaches on his show are great. But I couldn't help myself in thinking that creating a license
plate in Illustrator would not only be possible, it would end up looking better, and it would be scalable
to boot.

The challenge though is quite apparent -- license plates feature text that is embossed into the metal --
and Illustrator, with all of the wonderful effects it offers, doesn't have an emboss effect. I know, kinda
silly, right? Is that an oversight? Not exactly. An emboss effect a la Photoshop's Layer Style and now
InDesign CS3's emboss effect, has been a pretty popular feature request over the years. There were
some Illustrator plugins that created a simulated emboss effect that have come and gone over the years,
but they were vector and never looked realistic enough.

In reality, Illustrator DOES have an emboss "effect" via the 3D effect. One could, in theory, apply a 3D
Extrude, specify a Rounded bevel, and set the position of the rotation to Front. However, even with
complex lighting settings, the emboss never looked good enough for me. Especially when you consider
that depending on the typeface, you'll always get really odd self-intersecting errors, which don't help
either.

So I spent a few minutes with Illustrator with this challenge, and came up with the following:

Not bad, eh? I think the emboss effect on the text looks realistic enough. In fact, if you zoom in close,
you'll find that I've also applied a texture effect to the plate itself, in trying to simulate that metallic look.
In the end, I was able to achieve the emboss effect using a single text object that is editable, meaning
you can change the text to read whatever you like. I also created a Graphic Style of the effect, making it
possible to apply that exact same appearance to anything else with a single click.

What was that? Oh, you want me to tell you how I did it? Ha -- you know me -- I wouldn't make mention
of something here if I wasn't intent on sharing the knowledge. Well then, let's begin...

DISCLAIMER: I don't specify exact values for the techniques here, just the steps you need to take. The
values will vary depending of size, font, and desired effect, so the point here is to encourage you to play
and experiment.

1. The obvious point of this tutorial is the emboss effect, so I won't spend much time on the license plate
itself. But it's pretty simple to create one anyway. A license plate is 12" wide by 6" tall. I used a CMYK
document and set my Document Raster Effects Resolution to 150 (which would be enough for what
we'll need in this technique). I rounded the corners (a license plate has a radius of .5"), drew out the
holes for the screws and created a compound path so that the holes were punched out of the overall
shape.

2. I filled the shape with a gradient and then applied a slight drop shadow for that realistic touch. To add
the texture, I choose Effect > Effect Gallery and applied the Grain Texture effect. I then added the
remainder of the graphics -- the background at the top and the New York State text. Finally, I added the
text of the license plate itself. I hope you like my custom plate (no, it's not my real license plate -- I'm not
the type to get "vanity" plates -- besides I'm sure they would look AWESOME on my "hey I'm a dad!"
minivan). I should also point out that I chose Helvetica Rounded Bold Condensed for the typeface --
besides for the fact that license plates have a pretty "soft" emboss, I wanted to get that rounded look.
You can experiment with different fonts on your own, but I would suggest that you avoid using a serif
typeface.

3. As a reminder, the key here for me was to have everything included as a single appearance, which
would allow us to keep the text editable and to apply it with a single click as a style to other objects, as
needed. In the end, I accomplished the emboss effect using 3 fills, and built it in such a way that would
work over any color background. So to begin, we need to wipe the type object clean. Select the type
object with your Selection tool and set your fill and stroke to None.

4. In the Appearance panel, choose Add New Fill, and specify 50K for it. With the Fill still highlighted in
the Appearance panel, use the Effect > Distort and Transform > Transform effect to offset the fill up and
to the left. Then, duplicate that fill and change its Transform effect so that it is offset down and to the
right. Your text should look something like this:

5. In the Appearance panel, select the fill that is offset to the bottom right and apply the Multiply blend
mode. This will ensure that the color on this side of the text will always appear darker.Select the fill that
is offset to the top left and apply the Screen blend mode. This will ensure that the color on this side of
the text will always appear lighter.

6. In the Appearance panel, select one of the fills and choose Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur. I chose 10
pixels but as I said earlier, you should experiment to see what works best. Don't worry -- as it's a live
effect, you can always go back and tweak this to perfection later. Once you've applied the effect, select
the other fill and apply the exact same Blur effect.

7. At this point, you can already see the embossed effect within the metal. Now all we need to do is add
the inked letters themselves, which we'll do by adding yet another fill. In the Appearance panel, choose
Add New Fill and make sure the fill is at the top of the object hierarchy. Apply a solid color. In my case, I
chose a blue color.

8. There are two problems with the new blue fill we just added. First of all, the sharp edges "kill" the
nice soft embossed look, making it look like the letters are sitting above the emboss instead of being
part of it. Second, the text has no highlights or shading, making it look rather fake. We can solve both of
these problems with one setting. In the Appearance panel, select the top-most blue fill and set its blend
mode to Multiply. This will allow the inside of the blurred offset fills to act as shading for the blue fill.
At the end of the day, your Appearance panel should look like this:

Naturally, you can now simply drag the text object into the Graphic Styles panel to define a style. That
way, you can apply this emboss effect to other text objects. As an added bonus, you can download my
emboss graphic style right here. I'm sure you can tweak it to perfection for your own needs.