In this week’s free Deke’s Techniques episode, Deke finishes up his Inline Text Spring Fever by finally noodling through how to create this effect automatically with the Offset Path feature in Illustrator. Combined with some savvy use of the Appearance panel, you can turn your boring text into this, with just a few carefully chosen numerical  entries.

If this isn’t exciting enough for you, check out what else happened this week: Deke (and my) first encounter with a manta ray in Maldives. Note how calm Deke is while the manta decides whether he’s interesting or not. There’s no describing the magic of this moment, except to say one of our dive buddies invented an underwater hand signal for "I think my heart just exploded in wonder."

You can see more images from our trip if you follow Deke on Facebook. And of course, the creatures of the Maldavian waters (and our Sri Lankan visit) are bound to make an appearance in an upcoming video.

Deke’s Techniques, bringing you artistic automation and aquatic adventure!