Foil Effect in Illustrator

For this tutorial, we will use some Gold Foil Textures and the Font “Shania” from Fontbundles.net (https://fontbundles.net/teweka/13184-shania-sweet-calligraphy-modern).

1 - In Illustrator, create a “New Document”.

2 - “Place” (Shift + Command/Control + P) your “Gold Foil Texture”, navigate to where you saved your files, select the one/ones you like and click “Place”. You may need to resize them.

3 - Select one of your “Textures”, go to Object > Rasterize, check your settings and click “OK” once you are done. Repeat for the others.

4 - Open your “Swatches Panel” and drag your “Texture” files into it one by one. You will see a green round icon with a plus sign in it under your cursor. You will see your new “Patterns Swatches” in the Panel. You can delete the “Texture” files if you want.

5 - Select the “Rectangle Tool” (M), choose a nice bright but contrasting color as “Fill” and create a rectangle covering your entire “Document”.

6 - Lock the Layer by clicking on the left side of its thumbnail to invoke the small “Padlock” icon, then, create a “New Layer” by clicking on the small button at the bottom of the “Layers Panel”.

7 - Select the “Type Tool” (T), choose your font (we used “Shania”) and type your text. Since we are using two lines of text and our font makes a weird overlap, we changed the “Leading” in the “Character Panel” and moved the bottom line a bit to the right.

8 - Select your text and change the “Fill” color to “None”. Then, in the “Appearance Panel”, click on the “Add New Fill” button at the bottom and choose one of the “Patterns” as “Fill”.

9 - Click on the “Add New Effect” button at the bottom of the Panel and choose Stylize > Inner Glow. Use #000000 (Black) as color, “Multiply” as “Mode”, a 30% “Opacity” and a 0.33 mm “Blur”.

10 - Create a “New Fill Layer”, drag it so it’s placed at the bottom and chance the “Fill” color to Black. With this Layer still selected click on the “Add New Effect” button, go to Distort & Transform > Transform and use a “Vertical Move” value of - 0.5 mm. Click on the small arrow to the left of your “Fill” thumbnail to show the “Options”. Click on “Opacity” to open the “Transparency Panel”, change the “Blending Mode” to “Multiply” and the “Opacity” to 60%.

11 - Create another “Fill Layer”, drag it so it’s placed at the bottom and chance the “Fill” color to White this time. Click on the “Add New Effect” button, go to Distort & Transform > Transform and use a “Vertical Move” value of 0.4 mm. Click on the small arrow to the left of your “Fill” thumbnail to show the “Options”. Click on “Opacity” to open the “Transparency Panel”, change the “Blending Mode” to “Overlay” and the “Opacity” to 35%.

12 - You can “Duplicate” your “Foil” Fill by selecting its Thumbnail and clicking on the “Duplicate Selected Item” button on the bottom-right and change the “Fill Texture” with another one. Then, you can “Hide” one of them or play around with “Blending Modes”.

13 - You can use this “Effect” with vectors and you can save it by selecting your text and creating a “New Graphic Style” in the “Graphic Styles Panel”.

Now you have learned how to add a foil effect in Illustrator and can apply it across multiple projects.