Our good friend Mordy Golding, over at Real World Illustrator, has come up with a technique for creating a license plate in Illustrator, sucessfully thwarting Illustrator’s lack of an explicit embossed text effect. License plates, hmmm? Perhaps Mordy is anticipating that hanging out with the likes of Deke will inevitably lead him to a life of petty crime. (Actually, he was apparently inspired by another beloved rapscallion, the incomperable Bert Monroy, who originally did the project in Photoshop on his Pixel Perfect show.) Check out Mordy’s results:

Mordy’s take:

Not bad, eh? I think the emboss effect on the text looks realistic enough. In fact, if you zoom in close, you’ll find that I’ve also applied a texture effect to the plate itself, in trying to simulate that metallic look. In the end, I was able to achieve the emboss effect using a single text object that is editable, meaning you can change the text to read whatever you like. I also created a Graphic Style of the effect, making it possible to apply that exact same appearance to anything else with a single click.

Intrigued? To see how he did it, check out Mordy’s terrific blog. If you have a lynda.com subscription you can catch more of Mordy’s generally wholesome instruction there, wherein you will also learn that Mordy’s favorite color is yellow. (Convenient that his favorite application likes yellow too.) Hopefully, his love of the sun will keep him from the dark side. Stay golden, Mordy!