Effects / Glitch

GLITCH

Watch it being adjusted

Screen recording of the Glitch sliders in Illustrator (placeholder)

How it works

Two copies of the face are moved apart by half the colour distance each way and painted in the left and right colours; where they overlap, the face is refilled in the text colour, so a spot-colour face stays on its own plate. Then horizontal bands across the whole word are cut out and shifted left or right. With Random off the bands are even and alternate direction; with Random on their height, position and shift vary from a seed, so a re-render reproduces the same glitch and Reroll gives a new one. All vector, no transparency.

What you can adjust

  • Colour distance, horizontal0–200 pt, default 4
  • Colour distance, vertical0–200 pt, default 2
  • Left colourNone / TC1 / TC2 / Black / White / Cyan / Magenta / spot; default Cyan
  • Right colourdefault Magenta
  • Artifacts count1–100 bands, default 6
  • Glitch/space1–100%, band height as a share of its period; default 33
  • Shift0–200 pt, default 6
  • Randomon/off, seeded per object
  • Rerollnew seed

Still live text

Glitch is applied as an Illustrator live effect, so the text stays editable. Change the word, the font, or any slider afterwards, and save the result as a Graphic Style to reuse it.

Prefer to do it by hand?

How to make a glitch text effect in Illustrator → walks through the manual Illustrator steps, then shows the one-click version.