Grunge Text Effect

Hello everyone. Today I'll be doing an Illustrator tutorial on how to make a grunge text effect!

This is what the final product will look like!

Here are some things you will need:
•Cocktail Shaker font from here.
•Grunge Texture from here.

Lets get started!

Step One: Getting your document set up
Create a new RGB document at 300 dpi and a size of 950x650px. Make a light grey rectangle that covers the art board and make some white text on top of it.

Next we are going to Expand the text by either clicking Object > Expand or by right clicking and selecting Create Outlines. Click the Unite button on the Pathfinder palette to make any overlapping letters into one solid shape. If you cannot find the Pathfinder palette, go to Window > Pathfinder.

You should now have something that looks like this:

Step Two: Adding 3D effects
With the text selected, go to Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel and apply the following settings:

Step Three: Preparing for a face change
Duplicate your 3D text by holding Alt + Clicking and dragging away. Expand the texts appearance by clicking Object > Expand Appearance. Select the face of the text and Copy it with Ctrl + C.
On this step, you might need to ungroup the letters until you can select just that faces of them.

Delete the duplicate and paste the letter face back in place with Ctrl + F

Step Four: Face change
Change the color of the pasted item to white and move it so it is directly over the 3D text. Give it a white border of 1px to cover any gaps that might show.

Step Five: Give it a gradient
Duplicate the white text from Step Four, take off the stroke, and give it a dark grey to black gradient. Displace the shape a little up and to the left. To give it a bit of a white outline.

Step Six: Add some shadows
Duplicate the white text layer and change the color to black. Move it below the 3D shape and go to Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur and use a radius of about 15px. Double click the shadow layer and change the opacity of the layer to 55%.

Step Seven: More shadows
Duplicate the shadow layer and change the Gaussian Blur settings by clicking Gaussian Blur in the Appearance palette. Give it a radius of 80px and change the opacity to 60%.

Step Eight: Background gradient
Put a light grey gradient on the background layer

Step Nine: Inner Glow
Select the background layer and go to Effects > Stylize > Inner Glow and use the following settings:

Step Ten: Texture the background
Take the grunge texture you downloaded and crop it/resize it to the size of your art board (950x650px) and place it in the document. Change the blending mode to Color Burn, which you can find if you go to Window > Transparency. Make sure this layer is above all other layers.

And there ya go. A sexy looking grungy word of choice. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!