Text Along Path

Cuttle’s Text Along Path modifier lets you make text run along any given path.

To create this in the Cuttle Editor, you can draw a path with the Pen tool, then select the path and do Modify > Text Along Path.

There are also several pre-made examples of Text Along Path in the Browse All Shapes > Text category, like text around a circle or spiral text.

Fit

Within the Advanced section, there is a parameter called fit which is useful for sizing your text.

  • none will always use the font size you specify. If the text is too long, letters will be cut off.
  • shrink will use the size you specify unless the text is too long, in which case the text will get smaller so that all the letters fit on your path. This is the default option.
  • scale will ignore size and always make the text take up the entire path.

There is also a lines evenly spaced option. This will place each line of text you write along your path, with each line evenly spaced.

Transform

Within the Advanced section, there is a parameter called transform which gives you two options for how letters are transformed.

  • rigid will keep each letter the same, just placing and rotating the letter to be on the path. This is generally better for print or geometric fonts where you don’t want letters to be distorted. It’s the default option.
  • warped will warp each letter. This is generally better for handwriting, connected, and bubbly fonts where the placement and connection is more important than preserving undistorted letters.

Tips And Tricks

When using the lines evenly spaced option on fit some paths will work well with many words, like this:

But fewer words will be too far apart:

You can adjust the spacing by changing fit to shrink and adding an expression like this one on the text parameter:

names.replaceAll("\n", " ")

And if you need to adjust the location for the cluster of words you can use the built in offset parameter:

One added advantage of using shrink for the fit is that you can add as many words as you need and the text size will adapt to include them all.