This is just me, and some people might accuse me of going the long way around the block. But...

One of the annoying things about Illustrator is the relatively minimal control that you have over rounded corner rectangles. It seems to me that you have two options if you wish to adjust the corner radius:

1/ Use the left and right arrows to alter the corner radius as you're drawing. All very well but the problem is that the box you are drawing very quickly gets to look like a circle and you tend to lose any fine control.

2/ Single click on the artboard and then key in the corner radius that you require. This is a little hit and miss but it works if you’re prepared to keep deleting the object until you get the size that you require.

Me, I prefer to draw myself a plain old rectangle and then move over to Effects>Stylize>Rounded corners. You can then turn on preview and use the up and down arrows to intuitively change the corner radius of an object. As I said: longwinded, sure. But to me it's the best of a bad lot.

Hi there.

Back to my favourite prog today. I'm going to be doing this while I watch Federer-Nadal in the Wimbledon final. If I appear a little distracted then, please forgive me (as I write Federer is two sets to one up but has fallen to pieces a little in the fourth set).

Illustrator. What a fantastic program. I was brought up using Freehand and for many years I thought it was the bee's knees. Then, round about version 9.0, Illustrator took over. For this exercise I'm going to be showing you how to create metallic looking text. I hope you enjoy it. Once again, any comments are greatly appreciated.

1. Create some type. In this case I simply click on the page and begin typing. I'm using the font Impact, which everyone should have. When you're ready switch to the selection tool and manually resize the type to your satisfaction. As ever, I've aligned my type to the centre of the artboard horizontally and vertically. I always do this, I just think it's good practice.



2. First of all, convert your text into outlines. Do this by selecting Type> Create Outlines. Now ungroup the converted type and apply a gradient to one of the letter forms. This is how I've done it:



3. Select the gradient tool and change the angle of the gradient so that it runs vertically. Here you can tweak the gradient to get it looking good.



4. Now the fun bit: if you're using a version of Illustrator earlier than CS3 you must create 10 swatches; from 100% black to 0% black. If you have CS3 you can use the default Grayscale Colour Group.

Apply a 10pt stoke and colour it 100% black. Next go to the palette menu of the Appearance palette and select Add New Stoke. Make this 9pt and 90% black. Make another 8 new stokes in this way, each time reducing the size by 1pt and the colour by 10%. As you work you will see a metallic looking stroke begin to take shape.



5. Eventually your stroke will look like this:



6. Now you have to apply the metallic stroke to every character. Of course, we wouldn't want to have to reinvent the wheel to do this, so go over to the Graphic style palette and with the first character selected, hit the New button. Select each letter individually and apply the stroke style that you have just created. Now manually adjust the kerning between the letters and group them.



7. The type may now be looking metallic enough for your taste. This next bit, therefore, is optional. Create an ellipse and align it centrally to the artboard. Fill the ellipse with a neutral looknig grey and head over to Effects> Artistic> Film Grain…. Apply the default settings and then select Effects> Brush Strokes> Angled Stokes… Again apply the default settings. I always find this a fairly straightforward way of creating a brushed metal effect.



8. Send the ellipse to the back and copy it for later use. Now apply a drop shadow to the type (Effects> Stylize> Drop Shadow…) These are the settings I've used:



9. Now paste the copied ellipse in front (Apple-F) and in the Transparency palette set its blending mode to Multiply. Adjust the opacity to suit. You should now have a brused metal effect on top of the type.



10. This bit is also optional. Here I've selected the Flare tool and applied a flare with the following settings:




Some might say that the Flare tool is simply too tacky to ever use and most of the time I'd agree. But what the hell…