Blown Away Text Effect

This column of text looks like its edges have been eroded away or blown off. It was all done in Illustrator. It’s made from a column or shaped text box filled with text. I made a number of Scatter brushes using individual letters. Simply type a letter or two, in the same font and font size, as the column of text then go to Type>Create Outlines. This turns text into editable shapes.

Drag the letter (now an editable shape) onto the Brushes palette. Select Scatter Brush from the options. I left the size pretty much the same but if you want your letters to look as though they have blown far away you might want them to scale smaller, etc.

I kept the scatter and spacing close to the defaults but enough to give the distribution a sufficiently random effect. I set the Rotation to allow a full 360 rotation of each letter.

Create several of these Scatter brushes with different letters.

Finally, I used the paint brush to roughly draw the outline of the main text shape on the right-hand side. Repeat and build up the letter drift as you want.

When you’re pretty much happy with the end result, select Object>Expand Appearance and then Ungroup. Each letter can now be selected if you want to pick off a few stray or unwanted scatterings.

The brushes can be saved for use in other projects and the settings can be edited anytime you want.