Write at an angle in Illustrator

In this quick tip tutorial we are going to show you how you can write and draw at an angle in Illustrator without rotating art boards!

The DirectPrefs plugin is free to keep when you sign up for a trial. DirectPrefs allows you to constrain angles without having to rotate your artboard.
You can set your drawing angle for many native and Astute Graphics tools in one free panel.

We are going to add some branding to this car mockup to match the angle of the decoration, but the first thing we need to do is find out the angle.

Find the angle of an object in Illustrator:

🏎 Grab the Dynamic Measure Tool (part of the VectorScribe plugin).

🏎 Click the first part of the shape you want to measure, then as you move the tool it will snap to points making it easy to use. It will annotate the path it is measuring and output the angle.

To type at an angle in Illustrator:

🏎 Open the DirectPrefs panel (Window > Astute Graphics > DirectPrefs).

🏎 Click the constrain angle value in the panel and enter the new angle.

🏎 Click OK to confirm.

🏎 Draw out the type box which will now be constrained to that angle.

🏎 Any nudging movements you make will also constrain to that angle until the panel is zeroed.