Wheel / Swirl / Tile / Twirl / Torus Font Shapes for Pages, Word, Indesign, PSP etc

Fonts in Apple Pages / Keynote / Numbers (iWorks)

The designs can prove useful in Apple's Pages etc software.

1) Start Pages

2) Open document etc

3) Click text box

4) Type to enter text (as normal)

5) Change font via the font dropdown to one of the graphicxtras fonts

6) Set size etc

7) Set color of design

8) Go to the inspector and select text

9) Set character spacing etc as required

Accessing fonts on windows

Once you have expanded the zip file, right select the TTF swirl galaxy file and then install the font. The font shapes are then accessible via the type face menu drop down of most applications.

example from font pack 2, apply the swirl design via the keyboard using the current color setting (this is set in different ways in different applications)

example - swirl galaxy font pack 2 - effects can be applied in many different ways such as adding a stroke (as above) or a gradient or metallic effect

Fonts in Adobe ® Illustrator

You can use the true type TTF fonts / characters in Adobe Illustrator. The fonts are all accessible via the typeface dropdown. Select the type tool and then just type characters A B C D etc as you would with any other font. The font sets all come with PDF documents showing all the character / keyboard / design relationships.

Once the type / decorative design has been added to Illustrator you can expand the design and then modify the shape as well as add other paths to the design.

You can also apply graphic styles and brush strokes to the text characters. You can manipulate the designs in many ways.

The above example shows the Illustrator type menu - all the fonts installed on the system, that Illustrator can access, are available via the dropdown.

As you see in the example, there are the usual Gill, Goudy etc fonts but you can also see the Graphicxtras fonts and they are showing some of the characters in the set. Select the font and then, as with all the font characters, access the shapes via the keyboard.

The above character was generated by typing the 'H' character on the keyboard in Illustrator. You can type one character or multiple character designs.

The font sets all include a document showing the keyboard character and their relationshop to the shape / design. You can set the color of the font shapes via the color palette or use the color toolbox fill.

example showing a shape being turned into an outline

Personally I find the character designs hard to work with (if you are using them as designs) in Illustrator and prefer to set them as an outline - of course then you can't change the design to something else without deleting it.

Use the type > create outlines menu command to change the charcter or characters into shapes / paths for Illustrator. The above example has a stroke but without changing this to an outline, the shape can't use various illustrator features such as the width tool / profile

The above example shows the text has now been converted into an outline and the stroke applied can now have the width profile applied. The width profile drop down comes with a number of different profiles to apply. You will have to expand and ungroup and expand appearance and then ungroup to separate the stroke and fill of the 'text' path.

The text does not need to be expanded for it to be modified by the large selection of Illustrator 'live effect' filters (you can't apply a standard filter but the plug-ins in the effect filter can be applied and can be modified any point in the creative process - even if the text is changed to a new character / shape design). The above example shows the roughen filter applied to the character.