Illustrator Some help with lettering

[somethinew]

I'm trying to some lettering in Illustrator that has a lot of thick and thin strokes. What I'm struggling with is getting the thick parts to transition into the thin seamlessly.

I've attached an example of the type of thing I'm trying to achieve

Any advice on how to tackle this would be appreciated.

 

[hawkeye]

Try using the width tool. Shift+W is the shortcut.

 

[somethinew]

The width tool is good but it doesn't work well for the type of thing I need

 

[sprucemagoo1]

Ok, the best thing you can do, is be aware as to the angle at which you are joining your lines, and then think maths. :banghead: If you can make sure that the lines you are joining up to are at a nice angle like a perfectly horizontal line, it will be so much easier for you. Then for the curves, you should be thinking on the lines of a ratio from the Fibonacci sequence, so that the curve is as exact as possible. As you can see in my example, after joining the squiggly bit with the thick line, on the tighter bit of the curve, I have placed an anchor point across from the corner. What ever distance you choose, imagine that it is 2 units of length. Now you can judge an anchor point going down from the corner at three units of length. Before deleting the corner anchors, copy the shape, this way you have a path as a guide to put the handles. Now make the handles from the anchors 2 thirds of the way back to where the corners were and they should look awesome.



You may want to try choosing the problem anchor, and then hitting this button if you don't want to be that accurate. It should tidy it up a lot.