There are several ways to create text in the form of a shape. Most of them involve lettering techniques, software or online word art generators. But for this simple example, we will simply use different fonts , font weights, font sizes and colors to create our Christmas tree shaped message (see screenshot).
Open Affinity(R) Designer and let's get started.
- Start a new document that is 1000 x 1000 pixels at 144 dpi for web/mobile and 300 dpi for print.
- Using any font, add the words of the phrase onto the canvas and stack them vertically. Also center the words on the canvas (see screenshot).
- Select the words Have a on the canvas. In the Context toolbar, set the Font to Noteworthy, the Weight to Light and the Size to 36. For now, set the Color to black (see screenshot).
- Select the word Very on the canvas and set the Font to Coiny, the Weight to Regular and the Size to 64. Keep the Color set to black (see screenshot).
- Repeat the previous step for the word Merry.
- Select the word Christmas on the canvas and set the Font to Noteworthy, the Weight to Bold and the Size to 72. Keep the Color set to black (see screenshot).
- Select each word in the phrase and set the following colors (see screenshot).
Have A - Red (DD1112)
Very - Green (01A662)
Merry - Green
Christmas - Red - Copy the string of lights from the collection file and paste it into our design. Resize the motif until it is the same size as the word Merry.
The first step will be to add the phrase to the canvas. But we don't want the words to be continuous in a line of text. We want to have each word in the phrase as a separate word on the canvas. In this way, we can resize and reposition the words individually. The only exception is that we will keep the words Have a together and work with them as one word.
Let's take a look at the phrase. Out of the five words, the most important words are Very, Merry and Christmas. The supporting words in the phrase are Have a.
One of the most important features of word art is the choice of fonts to use in the design. This is because your choice of fonts will set the style in the design. Since our phrase is very short, let's limit our fonts to two.
First, we will use one of the Apple(R) system fonts called Noteworthy. It is a thin, script or handwritten font, which is great for the less important or supporting text in our phrase.
Because we want to emphasize the most important words, we will use a heavy or wide font called Coiny (see link below). We will use this font for the words Very and Merry.
In order to give a little variety to our design, for the word Christmas, we will go back to the Noteworthy font. However, in order to suggest that this word is as important as the other two words, Very and Merry, we will set the Font Weight to Bold. We will also increase the Size of the text so that this word, Christmas, is the largest word in the phrase.
As the phrase is a holiday design, we will use red and green for the colors in our design.
As you can see, just by using different fonts, font weights, sizes and colors, we can create a holiday phrase in the shape of a Christmas tree.
Optional: To add a little variety to our design, let's also add one of our holiday motifs from our collection. We will use the strings of lights and place it after the word Very and before the word Merry. We will reduce the string of lights to the size close to the length of the word Merry (see screenshot).
Optional: You might wish to add a star at the top of the tree. Use the star that we created for our motif collection (see screenshot).
https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Coiny
Index - How to Draw a Holiday Theme Collection of Elements
Screenshots of Affinity(R) Designer used by permission of Serif(R) (Europe) Ltd. This article is not endorsed by Serif Ltd.
