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I have a need to insert a candle symbol in "elite" in the place of "i". I browsed through the comprehensive LaTeX symbols pdf and could not find any one matching up. Is there any easy way to achieve this? An image processing tool is always a way but I wanted to see if LaTeX has any solutions for it.

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5 Answers 5

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104

Here is a custom-designed Bezier-curve flame in TikZ combined with a dotless letter ‘i’:

candle examples

Here is the source:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{tikz}

\newcommand{\iflame}[2]{%
  \begin{tikzpicture}[scale=#1]
    \fill[color=#2]
      (0,0) .. controls (-1.5,1.25) and (.5,2) .. (-.2,4)
            .. controls (1,2.5) and (1,.5) .. (0,0);
  \end{tikzpicture}
}

\newcommand{\icandle}[1]{%
  \rlap{\kern-.0275em\raisebox{1.2ex}{\iflame{.035}{#1}}}$\i$%
}

\begin{document}

\noindent
el\icandle{red}te\\
el\icandle{orange}te\\
el\icandle{yellow!80!red}te\\
el\icandle{gray}te\\
elite\\
\par

\end{document}

If you find the serifs on the ‘i’ to be undesirable, you can substitute instead a vertical rule of height 1ex, depth 0ex, and width .7pt, with about .09em kerning on each side, and then lower the flame by .1ex. I tried it both ways and I personally like it better with the serifs on the ‘i’.

Addendum

I just noticed today that the middle three letters of “elite” are “lit” and that the last four letters are “lite”. There is also the visual pun “e-lite”, e.g., “electronic light.”

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  • 14
    Well then, this makes my little \sun loose some of its shine...
    – Werner ♦
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 5:33
  • 2
    Aren't you a graphic designer? Because that logo is really terrific!
    – yo'
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 10:38
  • 2
    @Hans-PeterE.Kristiansen cycle only works with lines, so you can say -- cycle but it doesn't work with curves. As the path is filled, it is closed anyway so it doesn't make a difference to the final rendering.
    – Andrew Stacey
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 19:51
  • 1
    Excellent!! One suggestion: if you change the definition of iflame to use fill[#2] instead, then the options passed to icandle would be standard tikz options so other parameters could be passed in if so desired. For example: \icandle[color=red, opacity=0.5] etc. One could even specify a draw color different than a fill color.
    – Peter Grill
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 21:00
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    @PeterGrill: Ah yes, I like that idea. One thing to note: It's important here not to use a draw color (only fill color) as drawing a border significantly increases the size, while also exposing a path-cycle flaw at (0,0) in this implementation (not present in fill-only mode). If there were a way to stroke the path on the interior only, that might work.
    – Todd Lehman
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 21:04
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Here is a text-based "candle", obtained by stacking \sun (from wasysym) on top of \i using the accents package. Some scaling is provided by \scalebox from graphicx. It even scales based on the font selection (like \large, \Large, ...).

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}% http://ctan.org/pkg/graphicx
\usepackage{wasysym}% http://ctan.org/pkg/wasysym
\usepackage{accents}% http://ctan.org/pkg/accents
\newcommand{\sunI}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\sun}}{\mbox{\i}}}}%
\begin{document}
elite~el\sunI te
\end{document}​

I'm not sure how candle-ish of a look you're after... :-|

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  • Werner - That would work great for me, however there is always room for improvement. So I hope other people keep posting good suggestions. Thanks for your help
    – Aku
    Commented Feb 8, 2012 at 0:38
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By adjusting the vertical postion of the symbols, I think that this can work:

\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage{txfonts}
\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{accents}
\newcommand{\candle}{\ensuremath{\accentset{\scalebox{.5}{\(\varspadesuit\)}}{\scalebox{.6}{\(\talloblong\)}}}}
\begin{document}
elite el\candle{}te
\end{document}

candle

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12

As there is a unicode for this in version 7.0, I present a pure symbols solution with the only available font I could find. 

% arara: lualatex

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newcommand*{\candle}{{\fontspec{symbola.ttf}\symbol{"1F56F}}}

\begin{document}
   el\candle te
\end{document}

enter image description here

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5

There's a \Candle symbol in tikzsymbols package. 

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{tikzsymbols}
\begin{document}
    \Candle
\end{document}

Output

A word of caution: I notice the flame is not exactly aligned.

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  • @Werner Do you know name of the cotton rope thing in between the wax and flame (English is not my first language :P)?
    – hola
    Commented Oct 20, 2017 at 18:21
  • 1
    It's called a candle wick.
    – Werner ♦
    Commented Oct 20, 2017 at 18:35

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