Dang, I did it again, I thought I was in the photoshop forum.

and here was my result.

It only appears that way. If you look close at the two image you guys posted, they were created from a straight line of dots. The twisting bent the lines so that it looks like a design.

The one thing, I see, that I did not do was blend the text with the dots. Not to mention the one I did in illustrator was done with circles not dots(no fill and black stroke vs. no stroke and black fill). It was a quick mock up to show that the tool did work.

I'm afraid none of the suggested methods come close at all.

Notice the individual circles aren't deformed; they're all perfectly round. It's their locations that have been affected by deformation, as if dotted strokes, like in post 7 - and we can be pretty certain some sort of deformation was applied, the lines are too perfectly spaced/warped.

It's a well-done effect, and I'm convinced it can be reproduced by following a series of simple steps - no manual, artistic treatments necessary.

My first thought was it must be Photoshop, but since the circles are all still round it must be vector. But even if you could deform a series of paths into that spiraled mess so accurately, then simply using a dotted stroke won't suffice because they'd all be equally spaced and you won't get that moire effect where it looks like there's depth, troughs/valleys in the shapes implied by the spiraling dots.

Perhaps if you created a "skeleton" of the spiral in PS and placed it below your path array and then used the Warp Tool (by hand of course), following the lines in your guide "spiral skeleton" below as you stroked across your path array. AND/OR, what if before stroking with the Warp Tool, you snapped a single vector point to every circle made by your array of dotted stroked lines and deformed those - just a grid of lone vector points, no lines - with the Warp Tool instead? With the vector points warped around with the Warp Tool in the right way, what could you do with those points now? I honestly don't know. All I ever do withj singular vector points is purge them with Path Cleanup when they're leftover from a bunch of Pathfinder operations.

Anyway, once you got the dots in the right places if you then applied a radial gradient to each dot you might get the lettering effect in there by taking the word "mar", feathering the edges and setting it on top of the dots, set to a blend mode like Multiple or Hard Light so it darkens any dark pixels below making the dark inner part of each dot's radial gradient seem like a thicker black dot than ones not receiving the darkening blending.

. . . can't figure out how to get the dots arranged like the OP reference. Maybe this is a just some raster filter done in PS, who knows.

nice try Wade...but doing it that way, one would need amazing surgical precision to pull off a pattern so perfectly aligned.

I think that is how the art was created and possible brought into Photo shop using their twirl efect or possiblywith a mesh.

Regards of how percision it is or not t5hat is how the underlying art was created.

I would have to think about the effect itself a little longer.

Best so far.

Thanks, you just made me realize the Width Tool changes the sizes of dashes on a dash stroked line, awesome.

With my approach the letters have to be done manually by widening the strokes to form letters with larger dots and my example will need denser lines in the text area to provide enough dots. My example was just throwing an idea, the reference image has much more cleaner pattern that is very well aligned. If it was done in a similar way that I'm suggesting, it would have a very different shape in step 2 on the image I attached. I only gave a rough example. It is obvious that a twirl deformation was applied or recreated using an initial graphic. The question is what was that initial graphic in its unwrapped shape  before being distorted by the twirl. It is hard to figure that out by looking at the distorted result.

I think you gave the correct answer. And by the way this was the first thing I tried but with an array of circles  and although I got the same twirl as the reference, the circles were all stretched giving a very different appearance. It didn't occur to me that I can convert one anchor point paths to a circle shape. I haven't tried your suggestion yet but it is obvious that it will work. May be in addition to your steps it is better to wrap the points array with an envelope mesh grid for smoother twirl.

Thanks, Carlos.

Don't know, not worried about it; I had fun, learned/relearned some stuff.

I think the letters were done manually. The circles on the letters look very precicely  scaled to make a perfect transition but this can be achieved by creating selection guides with  offset paths of the letters. The offset paths can be filled with different colors to serve as guides on a locked layer below and this will make relatively easy to select the right circles for scale transitions. And if you make different groups of circles for each size scale, the scale transform effect can be used on each group that will allow very fine tuning of the transition easier and in a more interactive way.

As I said, I'm not satisfied with the lettering, but I have a small, gray idea scratching at the back door of my mind. Hope to try it out in the next day or two.

the background is easy, i cant figure out exactly how to fit the text into it. this is a halftone effect but the problem is the text has a irregular tone, it goes from a bit thick to a bit light back and forth making it harder.

sure it is a halftone effect. yes it's "easy" to duplicate the background. the text part is where the halftone values are which are hard to duplicate.  the only way i see it is t incorporate the letters onto the background and then create an overall halftone effect but that stil didn't go well when i experimented. Judging by the letters used which is MOR? or something if this was a random text, there could be a way to duplicate the entire thing as is but if the designer intentionally wanted  the letters MOR incorporated into the halftone, that would be difficult and i have no idea yet, still playing..

Here's the background version.

you rest your case? not sure you had a case to being with. Would you have the background done another way? Im not seeing the difference here, the background doesn;t match up or something? it's not word for word exact but that's all there is to the background.