Joining Paths Perfectly

CATEGORIES: Design Tip of the Day, Illustrator | Jeff Witchel | September 08, 2006

In a lot of the logos that I design, I’ll start with outlined lettering of the corporation name and then, in some way, alter the lettering. Sometimes this involves stealing a curved piece of one letter and combining it with another. In this case, “stealing” is not a crime, but the end results could be if care is not taken in joining the curved shapes.

The trick is to get the endpoints of the two paths that you’d like to combine lined up as close as you can by eye. Then allow Illustrator to do the rest perfectly. Using the Direct Selection tool, marquee across the first two anchor points. Then go to Object > Path > Average and for axis choose both. When you click OK, both points are positioned perfectly on top of each other. Then go to Object > Path > Join and choose Smooth to join the two curved segments. Repeat the same process with the second point and you’re done. Now when your logo is reproduced the size of a billboard, you’ll get nothing but raves.

Tip provided by Jeff Witchel, Certified Adobe® Training Provider.

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