How to rotate, scale and shift individual letters in Illustrator
Use the Touch Type tool (Shift+T): click a letter and drag its handles to move, scale or rotate it, one letter at a time (there is no shear handle). The text stays live. JuicyType's Party! effect does it to every letter at once with a seed you can reroll.
The manual way, in Illustrator
- Select the Touch Type tool from the Type tool group, or press Shift+T.
- Click a letter. Drag the top-left handle to scale it vertically, the top-right to scale proportionally, the lower-right to scale horizontally, the handle above the letter to rotate, and the body to move.
- Repeat for each letter you want to disturb. Undo works per letter.
- For random caps, edit the letters directly; Touch Type does not change case.
Touch Type is one letter at a time; a headline of twenty letters is twenty adjustments, and there is no shear.
Menu paths checked against Adobe's current Illustrator documentation; hands-on verification and screenshots are still to come.
Party! with JuicyType
Select the text, open the JuicyType panel, choose Party!, and drag. It is a live effect, so the text stays editable and every control can be changed later.
- Shift0–200 pt, default 6, with Random
- Rotate0–180°, default 8, with Random
- Scale0–100%, default 10, with Random
- Shear0–80°, default 8, with Random
- Overlap−100 to 100% of the text height
- Auto spaceon/off, nests each letter against the ones before it
- RanDoM cApson/off
- Spread / 3D depth ±0–180° (default 90) and 0–50%: per-letter variation of the 3D direction and depth, with Match 3D and Strength
- Colorize!on by default, with a Theme: Kids party!, Neon night, Sunset, Circus, Pastel, Retro pop, Custom, three colours, and Walls match face
- Party hopnew seed
Common questions
Is there a way to randomize every letter at once?
Not for every glyph in one live text object. Object › Transform › Transform Each has a Random option, but it works on objects: outline the text, or set each letter as its own one-character text object. JuicyType's Party! effect does it on live text, and Party hop rerolls it.