How can you create neon text effect in Adobe Illustrator?

When you edit text such that the outside section of the text is blurred, it gives the appearance of glowing, you are creating a neon text effect (similar to a neon light). When it comes to bringing evening glitz and a melancholy 1980s vibe to your projects, light-up neon font is the best choice. 

Text effects like this would look fantastic on a poster or event flier, and they are quite simple to create. Neon texts also have been gaining a lot of popularity recently. It can not just be used in static designs but also in video animations and motion graphics. 

In this blog I will tell you how you can create neon text effect in Adobe Illustrator. 

How to create neon text effect in Illustrator?

First things first, open an artboard. I am describing how to create a neon text effect, and it only makes sense to add a dark background to let the effect of the neon do the magic. 

Now, I will use the rectangle tool and create an effective backdrop to work on. The rectangle can be made bigger just by dragging it. 

Use the color palette to change the colors. You can adjust the color to a lighter or darker version. 

You can lock the rectangle tool because it might get selected by mistake when you are working with neon text composition. Now select the text tool and click anywhere on the artboard. Change the color of the text to white so that you can actually see your text, and you can type whatever word you wish to type. 

I am going to take neon as a word and change it to white to explain this. You can choose any word you want, and the color need not always be white. You can also change the font of the next according to your liking.

Click on the type option on the top and then click on create outlines. This way, you make the text editable aligning with the outline or shape. 

Double click on the palette and choose a color for the words. I have chosen pink here. Once you have created the neon effect, it will be updated to a new color if you go back and change this. 

Now that my pink text is visible, I'll pick it and then click on the object button at the top of the screen. Then I'll click on the offset path, which will essentially produce a second version of our text that is somewhat offset from the original one.

Pixel images may be found on the next page. If I look at the preview, it basically adds a ten-pixel stroke all the way around the edge, and if I adjust it to 5px, it will be a thinner stroke all the way around. As long as I keep it at -5px on the inside, which is what we want, we'll be ok, right? It all depends on how large you've made your text when you first started off.

I'm going to go with a 4-5px size for this one. Although this is a different variation of the same neon writing, the interior of the text is significantly thinner than that of the original text. To achieve this, we'll just ungroup the item and drag it down to the bottom. Now we have another newly created shape.

I'll go ahead and pick these inner shapes, and then I'll choose my original shape and put them all together in a new document.

Because they are now both upside down, I'm going to adjust the color of the new text or form that I generated seconds ago to match the original color.

In order to make this form more feminine, I'm going to use a softer shade of pink. As a result, we've gone with a softer hue of pink. You may go to color and see if there is a darker or a lighter version of the color of your choice available to you.

Now I'll go back and put my thinner text back into place. The bulb is represented by the lighter hue in the center. The light is produced by the brilliant bulb, and the pink around the edge of the bulb will be transformed into the glow that emanates from the bulb as a result of this transformation.

As a result, if you wanted to, you could even make the inner hue a little lighter. To do this, we'll choose the outside pink, which is darker, and then go to the effects menu at the top of the screen and select blur.

Choose Gaussian blur from the drop-down menu and then click on the preview box. You have complete control over how this is displayed. The glow is being added, and the neon text effect is being created, as you can see in this image.

Again, depending on the size of your artboard and the composition you're working with, you may make adjustments to fit your needs. Make the necessary modifications to meet your needs.

As you can see, we've developed some neon writing that may be enhanced by applying a very tiny blur to the light bulb itself, as shown. If you like, you may also add a slight blur to the image.

Now, you should pick the previously blurred neon text and select the edit option at the top of the screen, after which you should copy and paste it in front of the image. If you hold shift and use the arrow keys to just hit the up arrow key, you may navigate to your appearance panel and pick the gaussian blur effect.

It is possible to boost it just enough such that when you slide it back under while holding the shift key and using the arrow keys, it just produces a faint light around the letters.

You have the ability to customize the transparency of this as you see fit. I'll go with anything in of the range of 80 %. You can now change the color to anything you like and build graphics in a variety of hues using the same technique.

Don't be concerned about the colors thinking you'll have to start from the very beginning anyhow. You have the option of changing the color in the last phase as well.

Wrapping up

Neon lights are so beautiful and looks great in the dark. It is an on-demand design that many people like. You can, other than in Adobe Illustrator, create neon text effect in Canva or any other design tool as well. 

I hope this blog was beneficial for you and you will be able to create neon text in your future designs and even animate it for motion graphics. It is also a great idea to use neon text effects on video thumbnails.

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