The human
eye is well used to viewing horizontal and vertical text,
but when placed against a curved graphic it can often seem
a little disconnected. Thus a good design technique is to
be able to place text around a set path. So let's take our
mobile agent graphic:
I've drawn a line with the pen tool which we will use
to define the path for the text. Next we can use Text
-> Attach to Path to attach the text. This then gives:
This is fine but it does not follow the line of the branch,
so let's undo the path, and redo the path so that it follows
the line of the branch:
which is a definite improvement as the eye can now flow
over the smooth lines of the branch. Now we can modify
the path for the upper text, with:
When we apply the text to the path, it gives:
which compresses the text into the single area. This
is because the default alignment is for centre aligned
text. We can enhance this by selecting the stretch option
for the object. This gives:
This doesn't look quite right, and is a bit painful on
the eye. So let's try and mould the text around the branch.
I've done this by simply splitting the 'o' and the 'bile'
and moving the 'o' below the 'bile'. This gives:
Finally we can see how it animates:
So there you go. A simple example of laying out text
on a path. As you can see, the only way to really determine
the best design is to experiment.