Today marks my first-ever video recorded in Illustrator CS6. And it’s all about a topic as old as the hills: the dark art of creating type along both the top and bottom of a circle. Which hasn’t changed since, seriously, I don’t know. Like when FreeHand was still a baby.

(Just joshing. FreeHand had type on a path back when Illustrator was nothing more than a point-text-making toddler.)

Here’s the official description from lynda.com:

This week’s free Deke’s Techniques is his first recorded in Illustrator CS6. But aside from gazing at the new dark interface, never you fear, there’s nothing in this technique that can’t be done in earlier versions of Illustrator. Which is to say, placing type on the top and bottom of what appears to be a single circle still requires some finesse, even in this era of Illustrator CS6. And Deke’s here to show you exactly how it works.

It’s really a matter of understanding how to stack two circles, using the alignment setting and smart guides to your advantage, and then adjusting the scale and tracking of the text to finish the effect. The result is a couple of lines of fiercely aligned logo text (pictured in a jaunty crop below):

For members of lynda.com, Deke’s got an exclusive follow up movie in the library this week in which he demonstrates how to curve this very text, especially handy when you change something long like TORTELLINI to something short like MILK.

And Deke will be back next week with another free technique!

Here’s the idea behind the members-only video: Sometimes your text is sufficiently short that when you wrap it around a circle, it looks like garbage, with big gaps and all the letters at different angles. But it you distort the text a bit—using an art brush—it looks great. Learn all about it at lynda-with-a-Y-dot-com.