How to create a squarish ‘TV Shape’ word balloon in Illustrator.
Steve writes:
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out how to get my balloons to have that “squarish TV” look. I’ve tried EVERYTHING. Can you give me the dumbed down version of how to do this?”
Yes! A great way to fit more text into a balloon is to make the shape less round and more square, or “TV-shaped” (square with round corners, get it?). Some letterers even choose to always draw TV Shape Balloons as a matter of style preference. Here’s how to make one…
First create your a word balloon. Then, using the Open Arrow tool, shift-click on each of the four curves of the balloon. It should look like this, with the handles showing, and each of the points as open squares:
![](/tips/tvshape/space3.gif)
Choose the Scale tool, 1) click in the center of the balloon and 2) click and drag to pull the curves out slightly.
![](/tips/tvshape/space4.gif)
Be careful not to make one balloon on a page (or in a story) considerably squarer than the rest. A subtle use of this technique can work fine in a story with generally round/ovular balloons. Or if you prefer, make the stylistic choice to use TV balloons throughout (a good choice on a book that is extra-heavy with text). Just be consistent.
Here’s an animation of the process, to help you see how it will look as you do it:
![](/tips/tvshape/tvballoon.gif)