Put the wow into your words; spruce up all-text layouts with special type effects - Desktop Publishing - Tutorial

Home Office Computing, March, 1994 by Luisa Simone

MOST DESKTOP PUBLISHING PROJECTS ARE COMPOSED mainly of words, not pictures. And whether we care to admit it, all of us have produced monotonous text layouts---otherwise known as the dreaded gray page.

Whenever you fill an entire page with text set at a small point size, you've created a gray page. The overall pattern of black letters tends to blend with the white paper background, producing a midtone gray. In fact, when designers talk about adding "color" to a page, they are usually referring to contrasts of tone, not hue. Good designers use bold black letters and white space to balance gray text blocks.

The easiest and often most appropriate way to add color to an all-text layout is with display type. By enlarging the point size of specific text elements, mixing bold and italic typefaces,,and adjusting the leading, you bring contrast and texture to your layouts.

There are lots of ways to define display type. Traditionally, headlines, subtitles, and initial caps are considered display type because they are set in largepoint type. For your design purposes, however, display type should be defined as any text element that adds visual interest to a page. Magazines and newspapers, for example, frequently dress up a page with pull quotes (an attention- grabbing sentence excerpted from the running text) or kickers (an identifying tag line that precedes a headline).

Display Type With Zing You can make your display type more distinctive in various ways. The simplest solution is to choose a decorative typeface. Selecting the best display face is an art in itself and deserves a more thorough discussion than is possible here. Alternatively, you can create special text effects. In fact, one of the unique characteristics of outline fonts (in either the TrueType or PostScript Type 1 formats) is that they are malleable and can be rotated, stretched, and warped to fit your design needs.

If you are creating buttoned-down business documents, you'll find all of the text formatting options you need right in your desktop publishing program. Today, both high-end and entry-level DTP programs supply powerful design functions like rotation and drop caps. Used creatively, even standard typographic controls can produce stunning text effects. For example, the forced justification option will spread out the words in a line of text-- or the individual letters of a single word--to fill the entire width of a column. Designers commonly use forced justification in multiple-line headlines. Or try a background of very lightly tinted gray letters for a watermark look or white letters against a black box for added contrast.

When it comes to special text effects, entry-level programs--such as Microsoft Publisher for Windows and Spinnaker's Express Publisher with Text Appeal for Windows--actually provide more functions than their high-end counterparts. For example, Microsoft Publisher includes 'a WordArt tool that wraps text around a circle or arc, reshapes it into wavy banners, and casts unique text shadows. These dramatic effects work well for logos, zipping up an editorial page, or substituting for an illustration in an advertisement.

It's possible to create an even wider variety of text effects with supplementary graphics programs. If you intend to create special effects with words alone, consider a low cost type- manipulation program instead of a more expensive full-blown vector- drawing package. Type-manipulation programs such as Adobe TypeAlign for Windows or the Mac, Broderbund's TypeStyler for the Mac, and Bitstream MakeUp for Windows sell for well under $200.

Unlike desktop publishing programs, which typically force you to create text effects indirectly via formatting options, type- manipulation programs let you interact directly with the letter ,outlines. By using Adobe TypeAlign, for example, you can flow text along a free-form bezier curve. Each time you reshape the curve, by adjusting the tangent control handles or adding new points, the text is automatically realigned to the new path. This is a great way to energize text: A subtitle about company profits can match the rise and fail of stock prices and a pull quote about acrobats can mimic the tumblers' movements.

All three type-manipulation programs let you stretch and mold the outlines of actual letters. With a little bit of skill--and patience--you can create a new kind of pictogram: Shape the word bear so that it looks like a grizzly, or have the word shark grow a dorsal fin. Both TypeStyler and MakeUp give you a head start on this with ready-made shapes--including octagons and ovals--that can be pushed and pulled into free-form silhouettes.

A new class of type-manipulation program breaks the boundaries of the twodimensional page by literally extruding your text into three dimensions. Pixar Typestry for Windows and the Mac, Strata Type 3d for the Mac, and Crystal Graphics's Flying Fonts? for DOS allow you to generate different views of three-dimensional type by changing the perspective, adding light sources, and applying surface textures to letters.