Kendra Schaefer

SECTION 3: DISTORTING THE CONTENT

Let’s prep the content for distortion.

First, while holding down Shift, select all of the text areas of the document. That includes all four columns, the “NEWS” title, the “National & World” headline, plus the circulation and price. Also select any other text that you added. Then right-click (Ctrl+Click for Mac users), and select “Create Outlines”. You should get this result:

Next, while holding down Shift, select the horizontal lines above and below “NEWS”. With both selected, go to Object > Path > Outline Stroke. You’ll see the anchor points around these change slightly.

Finally, click on the photo you imported, and go to Object > Rasterize, and choose 300ppi.

Okay, we’re ready for our distort.

Go ahead and selected all of your content at the same time. Move than content on top of the newspaper backing we made in section 1.

Now, go to Object > Envelope Distort > Make with Mesh. Choose 3 rows and 3 columns. You should now have this:

From now on, what we’re going to do is use our Direct Selection tool to prod, pull and mold this newspaper graphic onto the backing.

You can do this however you want, but I’ll show you my way. First, I rotate the mesh a little so that the bottom of the content is at the same angle as my backing.

Then, I use my direct select tool, and holding down Shift, select just the top row of anchor points in the grid. I use those to pull the top left and top right corners into place.

Then I pull the next row in, shaping the two outermost anchors so that their curves match the curves of the paper.

I then move down to the next row, and so on, adding very slight curves. When I’m done, I’ve got a decent newspaper icon that looks good in multiple sizes.