Updated 1/11/2008

Creative Text

This is actually a very simple method of making your graphics look nice. Text may be the least of your worries, but the fact that it is usually the last step (aside from the border, etc…) in whatever you are making, means that it can somehow turn the tables around. So here, I am going to introduce several of my little ways of making the text seem interesting and fitting.

Two Different Font Styles Play around with your fonts a bit. You can often find two different fonts that look nice together, and make the words you want fit in. I suggest that using two different font styles is enough, though sometimes, you can make it more like a part of the design rather than just "text." (Examples below)


Polygonal Fragmented Text After writing and placing your text, make a new layer and merge it together with your text. Then, take the Polygonal Lasso Tool and cut a piece of your text layer out. Paste that piece back on as a new layer and place it near, but not exact, the cut-off end of your original text. From here on, it's really your choice what you want to do. You can leave it as a regular fragmented piece, or play some effects. I like to lower the opacity and if needed, rotate it a little bit, between 10-20 degrees. You can use the polygonal tool on your text layer as many times as you want. (Examples below)


Freehand Fragmented Text This is pretty much the same thing as the Polygonal one above, except this time you are using the regular Lasso Tool . You can freehand cut out any size piece of text and then play around with the effects. (Example below)


Motion Text After writing and placing your text, make a new layer and merge it together with your text. Then duplicate the layer and highlight the original copy. Go to Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur and adjust the distance. Leave the angle at 0, unless you're planning to do something funky lol. This will create a nice motion background to the text. (Example below)


Smart Lighting/Erasing You've probably started to notice that once the text is like a layer, you can do practically anything with it. One way to do effective lighting to your text is of course, various gradients and dodge tools. What I like to do is erase some of the edges, or sometimes, I do Lens Flare Filter -> Render -> Lens Flare (make sure to do this on the text layer, not on the background). There are many more ways to do lighting effects on the text, these are just some ways that I do mine. (Example below)


Boxed Background So instead of doing stroke or outer glow on your text all the time, you can make boxed background for it. Simply make a nice, long selection, depending on how lengthy your words are, and fill in a background color that makes your text visible. If you want, you can rotate your selection (thus rotating your text too, if needed), and add some more simple text decorations around. I also like to erase some parts of my boxed selection sometimes, using a Photoshop Default brush - chalk 11 px. (Example below)


Blended Boxy Letters Instead of making separate boxes for each latter, you can make even nicer blended boxes in the background. Duplicate your text layer (after merging) and highlight the original copy. Go to Filter -> Pixelate -> Mosaic and adjust the cell size according to your text font and size. I used Garamond at Sharp mode, size 18, and cell size 8 squares. (Example below)