Want to create professional-looking badge logos with curved text? You’re in the right place. This tutorial walks you through exactly how to wrap text around a circle in Adobe Illustrator — and if you’re ready to take your logo skills even further, grab my free Logo Design Workbook below to get started the right way. 👇
🎁 Logo Design Workbook — https://cryestudio.systeme.io/logo_design_workbook
What You’ll Need Before You Start
Before diving in, make sure you have Adobe Illustrator open and your logo artwork ready. You’ll also want to have your font choice in mind — in this tutorial, we’re using Oswald (Medium weight), which works beautifully for curved badge-style text.
If you don’t have Adobe yet, don’t sweat it. You can start a 7-day free trial and follow right along.
☕️ Start your 7-day free Adobe Creative Cloud trial → https://adobe.prf.hn/click/camref:1101lKN6K
How to Wrap Text Around a Circle Using the Type on a Path Tool
The magic behind curved text in Illustrator is the Type on a Path tool — and once you know where it’s hiding, it’s surprisingly simple to use.
Start by drawing a circle using the Ellipse tool. Hold Option + Shift while dragging to create a perfect circle from the center. Size it so there’s enough room for your text to sit comfortably at the top and bottom arcs.
Here’s an important step many beginners miss: remove the stroke and fill from your circle. Head to your Swatches panel and click the little red slash to clear both. This keeps your circle invisible so only the text shows up in your final design.
Now, click and hold the Type tool in your toolbar to reveal the Type on a Path tool. Click directly on the edge of your circle, and Illustrator will snap your cursor to the path and auto-populate some lorem ipsum placeholder text. Don’t panic — just select it all and type your actual words.
Adjusting Spacing, Kerning, and Alignment
Getting the text to sit perfectly on the circle takes a little finessing — but these tips make it way easier.
First, open your Character panel and switch the kerning setting from “Auto” to Optical. This is a tip worth using on every single design you create — it distributes letter spacing far more naturally than the default setting.
To adjust where your text begins on the circle, hover over the path until you see the small blue bracket lines appear. Click and drag those to slide your text left or right along the arc. This is how you center your word at the top or bottom of the circle.
For even tighter control, click between individual letters and use the kerning field in the Character panel to bring specific pairs closer together. Letters like L and A tend to drift apart on curved paths, so don’t skip this step if you want a polished result.
How to Add Text to the Bottom of the Circle
Once your top text is looking good, it’s time to mirror the process for the bottom. Select your text path, then use Command + C and Paste in Place (under the Edit menu) to drop an exact copy right on top.
Change the bottom text to your new word — in this example, “Outlaws” — then look for the blue bracket lines again. Drag the text to the bottom of the circle, and you’ll notice it flips upside down. That’s normal! Just drag the bracket to the inside of the circle path and it will flip to the correct orientation.
From there, match the font size using the Eyedropper tool to sample the top text’s settings. Then use your blue brackets to center the word along the bottom arc.
Finally, select all your circle paths together and use the Align panel (Window > Align) to center everything on the same axis. Misaligned circles are easy to miss until you zoom in — so always double-check before calling it done.
Keep Practicing — Your Best Logos Are Ahead
Wrapping text around a circle is one of those skills that unlocks a whole new level of logo design. Once you’ve got it down, you’ll start seeing opportunities to use it everywhere — badges, seals, sports logos, labels, and more.