20.14 Text Effects in Microsoft Word

20.14 Text Effects in Microsoft Word Václav Krejčí

20.14 Text Effects in Microsoft Word Václav Krejčí

Copyright © 2014 by Vaclav Krejci All rights reserved.

Václav Krejčí e-mail: upir@upir.org web: www.upir.org Twitter: @upiir Facebook: www.fb.com/BestTextEffectsInWord/

First (incomplete) edition, March 2014 All trademarks and copyrighted items mentioned and shown in this book are the property of their respective owners.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other organization, specifically Microsoft Corporation. I have no connection with this company.

Ahoy! My name is Václav Krejčí and I had a crazy idea to write a book about graphic design in Microsoft Word.

Despite the fact my youtube video “Was iOS7 created in Microsoft Word?” become viral with almost 3M views, I was not able to find any publisher interested in publishing my work.

However, bad news for me means good news for you – the incomplete manuscript is available for free. Please note that some parts are missing completelly, some are done only partially and there are a lot of typos. Still I hope you can learn something new from this book.

If you have not already, do not forget to read also my first book “7 Best Text Effects in Microsoft Word”. If you like what you see, follow me on Twitter or like my Facebook page. Thank you.

Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to: • Apply text effects • Adjust gradient fills • Create new styles

Microsoft Word offers two types of text styles. The first one is called Text Effects and Typography (1), but we can call it WordArt as well, because those styles are based on the old-and-infamous WordArt function.

The actual styles reflect the document color theme (ribbon Design › Colors) and change their colors accordingly, but other than that, there is no way how to modify them or how to add a new one. Only the text effects such as Outline (2), Shadow (3), Reflection (4) or gradient fill (5) are stored, other settings like font size stay untouched.

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It should be no surprise that those text effects are not very visually appealing and we will not use any of them in this book.

If you still want to try them, do not forget to set a sufficient font size – the golden rule, and not only here, is to keep the text big enough in order to see all the effects nicely.

The second type of text styles is called just Styles (6). Not only those styles can have font name and size defined, they can also be modified, created and deleted (by right clicking over the presets).

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There is still a limitation which makes them useless for all the text effects inside this book apart from this Milk? tutorial – they can be only used for very simple effects.

Later in this book you will discover that we use quite a non-standard techniques, and Word simply does not count with this usage.

Still, it is a good practice to master using those styles. They can be handy not only for simple text effects, but especially for defining content type (such as heading and paragraph) in large documents.

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Milk? text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type word “Milk?”, with font Gabriola, sized 160 pt (1). You can also make it bold. The milk is white and so should be our text – click on the Font Color dropdown (2) and select the white color. This will make our text invisible over the white background, but not for a long time.

To set a different background color, select Design ribbon (3), click the Page Color dropdown and select More Colors (4). We want a custom light blue color, not very saturated (5), but also not true gray (6).

The RGB values are: 144, 182, 229.

Before we start adding effects, take a look at the spacing between the letters (7). They do look almost connected, yet there is a gap between them. We can fix it and make the label tighter by clicking on the Font settings (8) button on the Home ribbon, and setting the Spacing of the letters to Condensed (9). Since our text is white, the dialog will not help us with the preview (it is drawn over white background), so we have to guess the right number. In our case, values around 6 – 8 pt seems to be just fine. If we want to see a preview, we have to temporarily change the text color.

Milk? text effect

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To have a complete control over the text fill, display Format pane (10) by right clicking on the text box and selecting Format Shape option. Remember that you have to click over the text box border, not inside. The second, not so very obvious way to display a Format pane is to click on the font color dropdown (2 on the previous page), and selecting Gradient › More Gradients option. If you have your screen big enough, there is no reason to close this pane once you have it opened.

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Our imaginary light shines from the top (11) (just like the sun does), therefore we want the text to be lighter on the top and darker on the bottom. Still the difference between those two colors should be very subtle.

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To add a drop shadow, select Text Effects (19), open the Shadow properties and select Offset Bottom preset (20). This is great for the start, but the shadow is too strong.

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Milk? text effect

In the Format pane, select Text Options (12) and change text fill to Gradient Fill (13). Change first gradient stop (14) to white color (15), and second gradient stop (16) to the light blue color – RGB: 206, 225, 242. Make sure that the Type of gradient is set to Linear (17) and the Direction is Linear Down (18).

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To make the drop shadow more subtle, make it more transparent by setting the Transparency to 70 % (21), make it less blurred by setting the Blur to 3 pt (22), and move it closer to the text by setting the Distance to 1 pt (23).

The drop shadow has nicely separated the text from the background, which is great. What is not so great is the text color. Even though we set the gradient from the white color, when you look closely at the top of the text and compare it with pure white (24), the text color is different. It is very light blue, but not white. How is it possible?

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The gradient fill is indeed drawn from white to light blue color, but it does not begin on the top of the text, but much higher (25). It is simply because the used font is created in a way that the letters have a lot of space above – see the size of the text cursor inside the text (26).

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To fix the gradient, simply drag the first gradient stop more to the right (27), until the text will be pure white on the top (28).

The next step is to add the reflection below the text. This effect will spice up the text and it only takes few minutes to tweak.

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With Format pane opened, jump back to Text Effects (29), open Reflection effect settings and select any preset (30). For some reason, you cannot start tweaking the values until any preset is selected. After that, change Size to 20% (31), Blur to 8 pt (32) and Distance to 2 pt (33).

This will create a nice blurred reflection below the text.

The text effect is finished, but we will spend few more minutes to show how to define a new style based on our setting.

Milk? text effect

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Distance Size

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When defining styles, we cannot mix bold and not-bold text together. Because the word “Milk” is bold and the question mark is not, select only the word Milk (34). After that, click on the More arrow for the Styles (35).

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This will not only reveal all the defined styles, but also allow us to create a new style – by clicking on the Create a Style item (36).

A small dialog appears with a preview (which is almost invisible over the white background), and the option to enter a custom style name (37). Spend a minute to enter a meaningful name, because as you will see later, the styles items shows previews, but it is not always very informative due to white background and small size (38). When you are ready, click the OK button (39) and you are done.

Note that the newly created text style is saved only for the current document.

To test if everything is works properly, type a text somewhere in the document, select it and move your mouse over the new style (40). You do not even have to click this button in order to see a preview.

And that´s it!

Milk? text effect

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Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how: • Quickly copy text boxes • Insert special symbols • Use Freeform shape

Creating a scribbled text effects can be done in three different ways. The easiest one is to use a dedicated font – you can find a tons of them on sites like www.dafont.com, just search in Handwritten, Script or School categories (or even for “scribble” keyword).

The big advantage of this solution is that it does not require any skills and it is very fast. On the other hand, you will learn nothing new, and so there is no reason to show it here. Also, the intention of all the tutorials in this book is to use only what you already have installed on your computer. No additional fonts are allowed.

If we look at the professional applications, like Adobe Illustrator, you can find more complex filters which could solve our needs – like the Scribble filter (1). This filter has a lot more preferences (including presets), and keeps the text editable. It would be great to have something like this in Word, but until that time, we have to find some other method to get this result.

Which leads us to the last method, the one we will use – draw a big messy shape over the labels to fake the scribbled look. It is very easy, the text will remain editable and we can use any font we want. You do not need to worry about the artistic skills, as drawing this shape is as easy as doodling with the pen on the paper. It just takes time – and a lot of mouse clicks.

The second method is to use a Filter, or Artistic Effects (as this function is called in Microsoft Word). In Word, you can apply effects only to raster images, but that is not the biggest issue – you can create a raster image from any label easily (by copying it and pasting it special as a PNG image). The editability is lost, but that is fine.

The main downside is a limited number of effects and the limited possibilities for tweaking those effects (for most effects, you can only adjust one property). In other words, there is no effect which looks like scribbled hand-drawing. Still, there are some nice-looking effects which we will use in later tutorials.

Scribble doodles text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the first word “scribble”, with font Calibri, sized 120 pt (1).

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We will use separate text boxes for every piece of text (including dingbats) to have a precise control over the layout. For this reason, duplicate the currently created text box – press the (Ctrl) key and drag the text box border (2).

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Click into the second text box and type the word “doodles”, with font Georgia, sized 110 pt and Italic – (Ctrl) + (I).

Move this text box to overlap the two labels a little bit (3).

To spice up the header, we can add some special symbols around. There is no need to use some special font – even the used Georgia has some symbols included.

Create a new text box with no outline and no fill, select ribbon Insert (4) › Symbol (5) › More Symbols. If not already selected, select font Georgia (6), and scroll to the bottom to see the special symbols.

The note symbol (7) looks nice – double click on it to insert it. Duplicate this text box several times and play with the font size to add some variation. The individual sizes are shown on the screenshot.

Scribble doodles text effect

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Now comes the scribble part. Select ribbon Insert (8) › Shapes › Freeform (9), and start clicking with the mouse around the document (10) (and especially over the text). This will draw a straight lines between the clicks.

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If you accidentally click on the wrong spot (which is unlikely), you can undo the last click(s) by pressing the (Backspace) key. Even if you probably will not use it this time, it is a shortcut worth remembering.

When you are satisfied with your creation (or when you have a strong pain in your hand), you can end drawing in three different ways. You can click over the first point again which will close the shape, so it will have a fill. We do not need a fill and locating the very first point would be quite hard, so we will use one of the other two methods instead – pressing the (Esc) or (Enter) key. They both do the same.

Even when we do not have the final colors set, we can test how the output will look like. Right click over the shape and in the Outline dropdown (11), select the color of the background – white (12). All we have to do now is to add some color(s).

Scribble doodles text effect

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There are about 7 text boxes and one big freeform shape in our document. We want to select all the text boxes to change the font color, which can be done in a few different ways.

Obviously, we cannot just click over the text to select any text box, because the freeform shape is on the top and will most likely get selected instead. We do, however can use the Select Objects tool, which can be found on the Home ribbon under the Select dropdown (13).

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With this tool selected, click on the top left corner (14) and with the left mouse button pressed, move the cursor to the bottom right corner (15). After releasing, all the text boxes should be selected.

If you have also selected the freeform shape by accident, you need to click on this shape with the (Shift) key pressed to deselect it.

After that, click on the font color dropdown (16), select More Colors (17) and choose the Rose color (18). The good news is that this dropdown is active even when you have the freeform shape selected. Since the shape does not contain any text, the color setting will not affect it at all. Still it is good to know how to deselect an object.

Scribble doodles text effect

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There are three possible ways of how to set the color for the freeform (or any other) shape. We have already shown one method – to right click over the shape and select the color from the dropdown.

The second way is to select the freeform shape object, go to Format ribbon (19) and change the color in the Shape Outline (20) dropdown menu. In our case, choose the light gray one (21). If you are wondering, the third method is to use the Format pane, which is covered in almost every other tutorial.

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Scribble doodles text effect

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The very last part of this tutorial is to set a different background color and to set the same color for the freeform shape.

To change the document background color, go to Design ribbon (22) and from the Page Color dropdown (23), choose the very same color as in the previous step (24).

And that is it! Feel free to experiment with different matching fonts and colors.

You can even play with the transparency of the freeform shape, which once increased can become a nice subtle texture.

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Estimated Completion Time: 10 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how: • Use Color themes • Master Freeform shape • Create multiple effect variations

There is no 1-click solution to make this effect in Microsoft Word, so we have to draw those shapes manually. It looks like precise work, but with the help of the underlaying text as a guide, zoomed-in view on your oversized computer screen (and the fact that we do not need to be very precise), anyone can do it. Surely it takes some time, but you will learn something new. For example how the lines are being drawn. This is quite important, as most of the applications (including the professional ones) deals with them the same way as Word does.

As you can see on the picture (5), the more the angle is acute, the bigger the “spine” is. In certain (extreme) cases it can almost look like an error.

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Go! text effect

Mitter is the default settings which we have already shown. With the Bevel setting, the big spine is simply cut off. Round setting is something in between – the spine is still there, but rounded and thus much smaller.

Do you already know which join type we will use for our effect?

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Let’s look at the lines more closely. Imagine you have two connected lines – that is, you have points (1) (2) and (3) which forms the open triangle shape. The pink line is the representation of the actual shape. Word takes those lines, moves them to both sides (4) and fills the space in between.

Fortunatelly, there is a way how to fix it.

Word and almost every other vector tools offers three different ways how to render the joins: Mitter (6), Bevel (7) and Round (8).

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “GO!”, with font Arial, sized 170 pt (1). Make it bold (2) (or (Ctrl) + (B)) and center aligned (3). Make sure that you have some short word as there is no way how to automate the process.

The longer message you have, the longer it will take.

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To make the label more subtle, click on the font color dropdown (4) and select a light gray color (5).

We want to have complete control over our creation, so it is a good idea to utilize the most of the screen. Maximize the application window (if not already maximized) and zoom in (6) so you can only see one letter at a time – the “G” for a start.

Also when drawing, you may be bored with the same old blue default outline color. Good news is that there is a way how to change it even before drawing – go to Design (7) ribbon and in the Colors dropdown (8), select different color scheme, for example Violet (9). We will probably change the color(s) later anyway, but it will be closer to our result right from the start.

Go! text effect

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Everyting is set and prepared for the drawing. Select ribbon Insert › Shapes (10) › Freeform (11) and start clicking over the first letter to create straight lines which covers the letter, but do not go outside of the letter borders.

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The key is to start anywhere (12) and try to draw as long lines as possible, which touches the edges of the letter (13). The longer lines you have, the less of them you need to form a whole letter shape. You do not need to be perfectly accurate.

If you accidentally click and create an unwanted line, there is no need to start from the beginning. Just press the (Backspace) key to undo the last click. You can press this key several times to undo multiple lines. While drawing, you can press any mouse button to create a new line.

As you continue with drawing the shape, avoid clicking the first point again (14) as this will close the shape too early. You can tell it even from the preview as the shape will get the ghost fill when you move your mouse over this first point.

When you are satisfied with the result, either press the (Esc) or the (Enter) key. If you do not want to use the keyboard, you can also double click with your mouse. Do not worry about the blurred line when drawing, it will become a solid clear line once finished (15).

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Go! text effect

As already mentioned, keep the line count to minimum. We want to suggest the shape, not to entirely fill it with lines. Why? Mainly because of the time. We want to stay consistent across the whole message (i.e. the “GO!” label). If we spend 10 minutes on the first letter, we would have to spend another 10 minutes on every other letter. With less lines, we can save a lot of time while still having a nice looking effect.

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Before we move to the next letter, take a look at the line joins in the freeform shape. Some of them are very sharp and look like spines (16).

Right click on the shape and select Format Shape (17) to show the format pane (18). Open the Line properties and change the Join type (19) to either Bevel or Rounded. Since the lines create quite angular look, using the Bevel setting will be probably better. In any case, the spines should be now gone (20).

There is one more thing you need to know before moving to the next letter: how to hide the helper text object and only see the freeform shape.

To temporarily change the font color to white (i.e. to the color of the page) could be an option, but there is still a better one. It is called a Selection pane.

To open it, select ribbon Home › Select › Selection Pane (21). You can see all the object(s) on the current page, in our case two – the text box and the freeform shape. Single click over the eye icon (22) either hides or shows (23) the object.

If you are wondering why my freeform shape is named “freeform 16” – it tooked me 16 attemps to get it right.

Go! text effect

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When you are done, hide the text layer (26) and select all freeform shapes. You can do it by clicking on the shapes with the (Ctrl) or (Shift) key pressed in the working area, but you can as well click on the individual lines with the (Ctrl) key pressed in the Selection pane (27).

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While the default violet outline color does not look bad, it may be a good idea to try some other variations. To change the outline color, right click on any shape and click on the Outline dropdown menu (28). Select More Outline Colors… (29) and in the Colors dialog, select for example the pink color (30).

I have not used this color from the beginning because it is very similar to the color of my hand-drawn shapes. It is as simple as that.

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Use the same technique to create freeform shapes also for the letter “O” and the exclamation mark. Toggle the visibility of the underlaying text layer (24) to see how those shapes look. They do not need to be perfect, some gaps and imperfections are allowed for sure (25).

If you want, you can stop here and call it done, or you can take few extra steps to make it even better.

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What about linking all the letters together with some kind of spider web-like shape? This could fill the empty white space around the text and create a nice header for any document.

I am pretty sure you already know how to draw a freeform shape. What you may not know is that you can draw (click) even outside of the document area (31). Those parts of the shape are visible while drawing, but disappear once the shape is created. Bear in mind that you can only click on the gray area. Once you click on the ribbon or pane, the creation of the shape is stopped.

This gives us a lot of freedom on the left and right side (32), but it is quite limiting on the top side, as there is not much space there (33).

The easiest way how to proceed is to draw a shape points inside of the page (34), and move everything to the top once done (35). The outline color of the shape is RGB: 255, 167, 196. The bottom part of the shape (36) is hidden with the big rectangle with no outline and white fill.

Go! text effect

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With all the shapes finished, it may be a good idea to try some variations. First option (37) may be to keep the helper text box visible and change the freeform shapes line Dash Type to Round Dot (using the Format pane). Second example (38) has the freeform shape lines without any changes, but with white line color, which creates visual gaps in the underlaying text – very similar to the

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previous scribble doodles tutorial. For the third example (39), the entire process was repeated for the second time to have two slightly different freeform shapes for each letter. Set a different color and you have very unique result. Finally the last example (40) is just a modified third one, where one shape is again a dotted line. And that´s it!

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white line

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Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to: • Apply multiple shadows to text • Add realistic feel with gradient fill • Add contrast with outline

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Simple Shadow text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box in a bigger size (to fit two lines of text) with no fill and no outline, and type “Simple Shadow”, with font Cambria, sized 72 pt (1). Make it center aligned (2), italic (3) and you can also make the first word bold (4).

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Select the text box by clicking its border (5) – it will change from the dotted to solid line. With the Home ribbon still selected, click the Font Color dropdown menu (6) and change the font color to white (7). This will make the message invisible over the white background, but that is fine.

Jump to the Design ribbon, open Page Color dropdown and select More Colors (8). This opens Colors dialog (9), where we want some very dark color, almost black, but with little bit of blue tint.

Move the crosshair to the grayish blue area (10) and adjust the lightness with the right slider (11) to make it almost black. The final RGB values are: 66, 71, 76. Right after clicking the OK button, the page background changes and the white label is visible again (12). Now it is time to add some effects.

Simple Shadow text effect

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Simple Shadow text effect

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Right click over the text box border and select Format Shape (13) to show the Format Shape pane (14). In there, switch to Text Options (15), Text Effects (16) and open the Shadow properties (17).

If you start tweaking the individual values (18), Word will assume you want to apply an outer shadow, which is not our case.

We want an inner shadow, and therefore we need to click the Presets dropdown menu first (19) and select preset Inside Bottom (20). We can of course select any preset from inner shadows, but by selecting this one, we do not need to tweak the Angle settings, as the shadow is already from the bottom, exactly how we want it.

However, other values needs a little bit of adjusting. We do not want the shadow to be blurred, therefore lower the Blur settings to 0 pt (21), and also lower the Distance to around 2-3 pt (22) to be smaller. An optional step is to not use the standard black color, but clicking the Color dropdown (23) and selecting our dark blue color which we have already used for the background. The shadow will of course not be in the color of the background, because the Transparency is only 50%. You can keep that value.

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We cannot add another shadow to the text, but we can add a shadow to the text box itself. To do so, switch to the Shape Options setting (24) on the Format pane, select Effect (25) and open Shadow properties (26). Notice that when we can select an inner shadow preset from the Presets dropdown menu (27), it has no effect. This is the reason why we have applied inner shadow to the text, and reserved an outer shadow for the shape.

From the dropdown menu, select Offset Bottom (28), which in this case is exactly what we need and there is no additional tweaking required.

We have a small inner shadow and we have a drop shadow, but the text fill is looking flat. We can change it by adding a very subtle shading using gradient fill. On the Format Pane, switch to Text Fill (29) and change it to Gradient Fill (30). From the Preset gradient dropdown, select Top Spotlight (31), which simulates a light shining from the top (32). The only problem is that the shadow is too strong and too blue. Select the third gradient stop (33) and from the Color dropdown menu (34), change the color to some light desaturated blue (35). The effect is very subtle, but it adds a more realistic feel.

Simple Shadow text effect

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Simple Shadow text effect

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To add more contrast, we will add a white outline to the text. With the Format Pane still opened, switch to the Text Outline settings (36), and change it from No Line to Solid Line (37). If not already set, change the Color to white (38) using the dropdown menu, and that is the only change what needs to be done. Get prepared for the celebration, our text effect is finished!

There is one more thing worth knowing.

In the tutorial “Milk?�, we have shown that a very simple text effects can be saved as a Style for the future usage. You may think that this simple shadow text effects is also very simply and could be saved, but it is not true. The Styles saves only text effects, not effects applied to shapes. If you try to define new style from our text by selecting the Create a Style item from the Styles dropdown menu (39), the preview will immediately show you that the drop shadow effect will not be saved, as it is not presented on the preview (40).

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Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to: • Merge label into an image • Use Artistic Effects • Recolor raster image

...

Dirt text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “DIRT!”, with font Arial, sized 150 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3), although the alignment is not very important this time.

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We need a lot of surrounding white space, so it may be a good idea to change the page orientation to landscape. Switch to the ribbon Page Layout (4), click on the Orientation dropdown (5) and change it to Landscape (6).

In Word, we cannot apply Artistic effects directly to the text, as this option is only available for the raster images. For this reason, we need to convert our text to raster image, which can be done in two different ways. Using the copy and paste special functions, or using the printscreen function. We will use the later one.

For more details, read the “XXXXXXX” section.

Before actually taking the screenshot, maximize the application window (7), and zoom in (8) so the word “DIRT!” takes as much space as possible. Because we literally take a snapshot of what we see, make sure that the text box is not selected, otherwise the border (9) would be included in the screenshot as well.

Dirt text effect

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After you do that, Word minimizes itself and gives you about three seconds before taking the screenshots. Use this time to maximize the Word application window again, and when the crosshair cursor appears, create a selecting from the left top corner (14) to the right bottom one (15). Make sure to not include things like scrollbars, ribbon, or the text cursor.

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Select ribbon Insert (10) and open the Screenshot dropdown menu (11). Word allows to directly insert the screenshot of any active application from the Available Windows list (12), but because no one expected to take screenshot of the current document, our needed window is not there. We have to click the Screen Clipping item instead (13).

After that, Word inserts this image into the current document, which may look like an error (16), but it is fine. You just need to click by the right side of an image (17), press the (Enter) key several times to insert a new page, and drag the text box to this next page (18). We do not need this text box object anymore, but it is a good habit to keep it somewhere in case we want to repeat the process if something goes wrong.

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Show a Format pane (19) by right clicking on the image and selecting Format Picture (20). The title of this pane changes depending on the selected content, it can show Format Picture or Format Shape, but it is still the same pane.

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In this pane, select Effects (21), and open the Artistic Effects properties (22). From the Artistic Effects dropdown list (23), select Pencil Sketch (24). This immediately applies this effect to the image (25).

Just like the most of the other effects, there are only two properties which can be tweaked. The first one – Transparency (26), sets how the effect will fade over the original image. A value of 0% shows only the effect, the opposite value of 100% shows only the original image. We will keep it to 0%.

The second property – Pressure (27), is more interesting. It defines how “rich” and “dark” the effect is. By default the value is 22, which shows quite a lot of shades of gray and a subtle texture (25).

This may be fine in some cases, but we want a really bold label that stands out, so we will raise this value up to the maximum of 100 (28). The image (29) shows the result.

Dirt text effect

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Dirt text effect

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The last part of this tutorial is to change the background color. Because the image is non-transparent, changing the page background is not enough, as the white background of the image would still last.

We have to recolor the image itself.

Before doing so, we change the document color scheme, which affects the recolor effect presets. Switch to the Design ribbon, open the Colors dropdown (30), and select the Green color scheme (31).

Jump back to the Format pane (32), switch to the Picture settings (33), open the Picture Color (34), and click on the Recolor dropdown (35). From the available presets, select some light green color (36).

The image is recolored, but the area around the image is still white (37), as this is defined by the page background color. While on the Design ribbon, select Page Color › More Colors (38), and in the Colors dialog (39), enter RGB values: 214, 255, 155 (40). Word unfortunately does not have a color picker, and even when the recolor presets are defined with the color scheme, they do not contain the exactly same colors. For more information about how to find out those RGB values, please see XXXXX. And that´s it!

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Estimated Completion Time: 15 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to: • Use Artistic Effects • Master Brightness and Contrast settings • Get RGB values of a color

...

Lines text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “LINES”, with font Arial, sized 100 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3). With the text box still selected, change the font color to white by clicking on the Font Color dropdown menu (4) and selecting the white color (5). The text is not gone (6), it is just invisible over the white background.

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Do not forget to deselect the text box, otherwise the text box border would be presented on the screenshot causing some unexpected results. For the same reason it is also a good idea to move the text cursor out of the view.

Lines text effect

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To change the page background color, go to ribbon Design › Page Color (7) and choose a black color (8). Be sure to select a black color, not just some very dark gray like this one (9).

Because the Artistic Effects can be only applied to raster images, and not directly to the text, we need to rasterize it – that is to take a screenshot. To keep the resolution high enough (more on that topic in section XXXXXXX), maximize the application window (10) and zoom in (11) so the label is as big as possible.

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To take a screenshot, go to ribbon Insert (12), open the Screenshot dropdown menu (13) and select Screen Clipping (14). This function will wait about three second – use this time to make sure that the Word application window is on the top and maximized. After this, draw a selection rectangle from the left top corner (15) to the bottom right one (16). Be sure to select only the text, not the surrounding objects like the scollbars. It is not very important of how much of the surrounding black area you select, but be sure to not draw a selection rectangle too close to the white label.

When the selecting is made, this image is pasted directly to the document (17), underneath the text box. Instead of moving this inline image, it is easier to select the text box and move it away (18). Even if we do not need this object anymore, we should keep it in case we decide to use it later again. There is no reason to delete it (yet).

Select the raster image again, right click and select Format Picture (19) to show the Format pane (20). Open the Effects tab (21) and Artistic Effects properties (22).

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22 Lines text effect

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From the Artistic Effects dropdown menu (23), select Line Drawing preset (24).

With the default settings, this effects fills the black areas with the line drawing, leaving the white areas of an image untouched.

As usual, there are only two properties which can be tweaked – Transparency and the effect-specific Pencil Size settings. By increasing this number, we change the size (length) of individual lines. Screenshots on the right shows the results for the values of 10 (25) and 50 (26). Notice that for the value of 50, the lines are all over the text, but that is still not enough. We want lines as long as possible, therefore we set the Pencil Size to the maximum value of 100 (27).

Unlike other tutorials using Artistic Effects, we need to keep the effect transparent a little bit so the label is slightly visible. It is still true that the line drawing is being drawn only over the black areas, not over the white text, but because those line are very long, the text would be unreadable with just the effect being shown (28). The default Transparency value of 25% seems to be fine – if you try to change it later, you will see that the value has not a very big imapact anyway.

Lines text effect

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-40 contrast Lines text effect

+40 brightness +40 contrast

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On the Format Pane, open the Picture tab (29) and Picture Correction settings (30). Instead of tweaking the Brightness and Contrast values manually, we will start with the Presets (31) to see what options we have and what setting will probably lead to the right result.

The four previews on the left shows the presets from the corners, which have maximum values of -40 or 40. You should know that those values are not the maximum ones, you can set both Brightness and Contrast from -100 to 100. Still, it is a good start.

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The effect is nice, but we want to somehow get rid of the lines on the background and keep them only over the text. To accomplish this task, we will adjust Brightness and Contrast settings accordingly.

When we talk about the lines on the background, the left two variants with decreased Brightness have them less visible. The top one, however, has also the label less visible, therefore the left bottom (32) seems to be the best choice.

This one has Brightness decreased and Contrast increased. Let´s see if we can adjust those values even more to get rid of the background pattern completely.

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Close the Presets dropdown menu and move to the individual Brightness and Contrast values (33). It may be hard to tweak them because they can together form a lot of variants, but we already know that we most probably need to decrease Brightness and increase Contrast.

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We start with the settings from the previous page presets, that is Brightness -40 and Contrast +40. By decreasing the Brightness even more, we only get a darker picture, and eventually end up with pure black picture, which is not what we want. Increasing a Contrast even more provides better result. The lines slowly fades until they disappear with values over 90%. Just to be sure they are gone, raise it all the way up to 100% (34).

From the Design ribbon, select Colors dropdown (35) and switch the color scheme to Red Violet (36). This setting affects recolor options from the Picture Color › Recolor settings. Open this dropdown (37) and select the Blue preset (38). Because this function recolors the picture to only include tints of blue color, the red stripes (39) from the previous black and white picture automatically disappears.

Lines text effect

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In Word, select and copy our image (Ctrl) + (C) and paste it to PowerPoint (Ctrl) + (V) (40). It will be gray, but that is not an error, just a different color scheme. To fix it, open the Paste option (41) and select Keep Source Formatting (42). The image will be blue again (43).

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Lines text effect

The next step is to select any dropdown menu for the color, for example Shape Fill (44), and select the Eyedropper tool (45). All you need to do is to move the eyedropper over the blue color and wait few second until the tooltip with the RGB values appears (46). Memorize those three values and jump back to Word.

Switch to the Design ribbon, select Page Color (47), More Colors (48), and in the Colors dialog (49), enter the RGB values: 34, 119, 172 (50). And that´s it. Just please do not tell anyone that we have cheated with PowerPoint and not used only Word as promised!

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To set the same blue color also for the page background, we need to know the RGB values of this blue color. Word does not have a color picker, so we need to quickly jump into the PowerPoint.

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to use: • multiple text boxes for text effect • transparency in gradient outlines • Find & Replace function

Word allows only one outline for a text, so in order to have multiple (different) outlines, we need multiple text boxes stacked on top of each other. All those text boxes will only have a different outline settings, but other than that, they will be exactly the same. Not only the text inside, but also the position.

While this little trick allows us to create the desired effect, it may also cause some troubles when trying to edit the label(s) afterwards. Here are two handy tricks to make the process much easier.

A Selection pane (1) is a great helper for selecting objects even when they are on the very same position, but once you click inside the text box with the mouse, you end up inside the object on the very top instead.

In order to edit text inside text box below the top one, we have hide all the other ones using teh eye buttons (2). By repeating the process for every text box, we can rewrite all the labels, but it is a tedious task.

Much faster way is to use a Find and Replace function (3), which can be accessed by pressing the (Ctrl) + (H) shortcut. The Replace All function (4) will look for every instance of the Find What string, and change it to a Replace with string in one click.

Outline text effect

There is a one specialty which you should be aware of – when you are inside the text box, the search will be done only for this text box, not for the whole document. When you have multiple text boxes selected, make sure you have set the Search to All in Search options (5), or nothing will be replaced.

The safest way to make this function working properly is to make sure that you have no text box selected when executing this function, and that you do not have the same string anywhere else in the document.

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “Outline”, with font Calibri, sized 72 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3). The text alignment is quite important this time – with the left or right alignment, the big text outline could be cut off. To change the page background color, go to ribbon Design › Page Color › More Colors (4), and manually type the RGB values: 27, 103, 107.

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After that, select the text box again and show the format pane – right click and select Format Shape (5). This label will be the one on the very top, so it should be without any outline, only with the white fill. To make it more interesting, we will make the fill a little bit faded.

Switch to the Text Options (6), open Text Fill and change it to Gradient Fill (7).

The default Linear type is fine, Direction should be set to Linear Down (8) (i.e. from the top to bottom). Change the color to white (9) for both gradient stops, but for the second one, raise the Transparency to 30% (10). This will make the text a little bit transparent on the bottom (11). If the text it transparent also on the top, move the first gradient stop more to the right (12).

Outline text effect

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Since we need a separate text box for every outline size, we need to duplicate the current text box. The standard (Ctrl) + (C) (to copy) and (Ctrl) + (V) (to paste) shortcuts works just fine, but after pasted, the object is moved to the bottom right side. We need to have both objects center aligned. To do so, simply click on the text box border and drag it to the left top (13). It should automatically snap to the previous text box and align properly.

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Now it is time to play with the outline settings. With the Format pane still opened (14), change the Text Fill to solid white color (15) and the Text Outline to Gradient Line (16). The Linear type is fine, but this time, we will make it from the left to right, so change the Angle to 0° (17).

Add new gradient stop (18) by clicking anywhere in the gradient preview (19), and change colors (20) for gradient stops to:

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First – RGB: 81, 149, 72 Second – RGB: 190, 242, 2 Third – RGB: 146, 208, 80

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To make the outline thick enough, change the Width to 3 pt (21). Remember that only half of this width will be visible once we move this layer below the white text.

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To see the effect better, we will move the current text box with the outline below the text with the white fill. To do so, right click on the text box and select Send To Back (22). The screenshot on the right already shows the result. You may notice that the gradient outline is much thinner – in fact only in half size compared to the previous page. As mentioned in the introduction, it is because the inner half is covered with the white text on the top.

Sending the object backward and forward with the right click menu is fine for just two objects, but since we will need about five different text boxes, all in the same place, it would be better to use the Selection pane. To show it, select ribbon Home › Select › Selection pane. The good news is, that both the Selection pane (23) and Format pane (24) can be opened at the same time, the bad news is that of course they take some screen space.

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There are two ways for sending the object backward and forward using the Selection pane. You can either select any item(s) and drag them to the top or bottom (25), or you can use the dedicated buttons in the top right corner (26).

Both methods work also for multiple selected objects.

Outline text effect

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For the newly created text box, change the outline Width to some bigger number, for example 8 pt (30). To see also the outline of the underlying object, we have to make this outline semi-transparent.

There is no way how to change the transparency for the whole gradient, we have to select each gradient stop (31, 32 and 33) and raise the Transparency to 40% (34). The screenshot on the left already shows the result – you can see two different sized outlines (35).

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Outline text effect

We should know enough to continue with creating the multiple outline text effect.

In the Selection pane, select the text box with the gradient outline (i.e. Text Box 2), copy and paste it and move it to the same position as the other two text boxes (27). When you paste an object, it is always pasted on the very top, but we need it below the white text (below Text Box 1). With the information from the previous page in mind, drag this item in the Selection pane in between the other two (28). The blue line (29) indicates where the object will be dragged.

Do not worry about the imperfections inside the semi-transparent white fill (36).

They will disappear once we add the third outline.

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We will create the third text box with even bigger outline the same way we made the second one. Copy and paste one of the text boxes and move it to the right position (37). Move it under the white text using the Selection pane by either dragging the item (38) or clicking on the Send Backwards button (39).

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Set the outline Width (40) to some very big number, for example 15 pt, and for every gradient stop (41), set the Transparency to 60% (42). This will make this biggest outline more subtle.

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There is one thing you need to know – Word is unfortunately not very precise tool. We cannot simply rely on the snap function, because when you select all the text boxes, the borders probably do not exactly match (43). How to fix it?

Firstly select all the text boxes by clicking on the individual items in the Selection Pane with the (Ctrl) key pressed (44).

Than open the Format ribbon and select Align › Align Center (45), and Align › Align Middle (46). Those two functions will align all the object properly.

And that is it! Except if you want to spend another five minutes tweaking the effect.

In that case, continue to the next page.

Outline text effect

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To add an outline, select the text box on the very top (47) (Text Box 1) and with the Format pane opened, select Text Options, Text Outline (48) and change it to Solid Line (49). Change the Color to white (50) and watch how the white outline on the bottom adds more contrast (51).

The last thing is a practical demonstration of the theory from the introduction – how to easily change the message. That is, how to change the text inside all the four text boxes.

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Outline text effect

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The last extra step is to add the white outline to the white text. You may think that it will not be visible, but do not forget that the white fill is semi-transparent on the bottom.

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Firstly click anywhere in the document to have the text box deselected. On the Home ribbon, click on the Replace (52) button, enter “Outline” in the Find What (53) filed and the new text into the Replace with (54) field. After that, click on the Replace All (55) button and voilà – new text effect is done in just a few seconds. And that´s it.

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Estimated Completion Time: 15 Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to use: • dashed lines in unusual ways • multiple text boxes to form and effect • advanced font outline settings

The whole text effect is made using only the outlines, even if it may not look like. It is because the usual idea of a shape with the outline is something like this (1). A simple rectangle with thin black outline applied to it. The fun part begins when you start increasing the Width to the bigger values.

Since the outline is drawn to both sides from the actual shape (2), at some point, there will be no place for the fill (3) and the shape will be filled with the outline instead.

It will be also much bigger than the original shape (which is the reason why we will use a thin font as a base for our text effect).

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width: 1 pt

Transform & Assemble text effect

width: 20 pt

pected in the small sizes (4), but when you start increasing the Width, also the dashes and gaps get bigger. Set it to some really big number, and only two (5) or maybe even one (6) dash will fit to the shape. The outline no longer looks like dashed line, but more like something random – which is exactly what we want.

The second property worth mentioning is the Dash type. The outline consists of (visible) dashes and (invisible) gaps, and you can choose from eight pre-defined patterns. The line is drawn pretty much as ex-

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width: 50 pt

The very last thing you need to know is that the Transparency can be used to combine multiple outlines to create complex shapes.

Three rectangle shapes (7) with different Width values and increased Transparency kind of resembles to our text effect. It is as easy as that.

(almost)

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “TRANSFORM”, with font Segoe UI Light sized 72 pt (1). Even when the text will be quite bold, we need very light font to start with as we will add a lot of “mass” with the thick outline.

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Show the Format Shape pane (2) by right clicking on the text box border and selecting Format Shape (3).

We need to add some “random” looking thick outline. Select Text Options and change the Text Outline to Solid Line (4). Keep the standard black color, but lower the Transparency to 60% (5) so we can see the fill and the outline at the same time (6). The transparency will also allow us to stack up multiple outlines on top of each other later. Make the outline thick enough by increasing the Width value to about 6,5 pt (7).

To get the random feel, open the Dash type dropdown menu and change it to Long Dash (8). While the dash pattern is not random at all, it looks random in this big size, as there are only few dashes and gaps being drawn over the individual letters.

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gaps Transform & Assemble text effect

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While the outline already looks quite random, the fill does not look random at all, so we want to get rid of it. Open the Text Fill options and change it to No Fill (9).

The result is already pretty satisfying, but we will not stop here.

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Duplicate the text box by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed and move it temporarily under the previous label (10).

The effect is different for every Width, so increase it even more to the value of 8,75 pt (11). Feel free to also play with the Transparency settings and change it to for example 35% (12).

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The second label looks quite different than the first one, which is great. Let’s see how they look combined. Grab the text box border with the mouse and move it over the first one (13). You do not have to be precise this time – we need some diversity. If the text box snaps to the first one and they are perectly aligned, you can use the arrow keys on the keyboard to move it around a little.

We could stop here, but the effect is too much random and some parts of the letters seems to be cut off – namely the “F” (14) and “R” (15). Adding another “layer” will help us to fix those issues.

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Duplicate the text box by either pressing the (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) shortcuts, or by dragging the text box with the (Ctrl) key pressed. Just for the tutorial purposes, I have moved this text box away (16) from the other two, but you can as well keep it on the same spot.

We need to add some details, so instead of making the outline bolder, we will make the opposite. Decrease the Width to 4,75 pt (17) and make it more transparent by setting the Transparency to 50% (18). To keep the randomness, choose some nonstandard Dash type, for example Long Dash Dot (19). This will create small blocks inside the text (20).

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To see how our effect look like, move the text box over the previous two (21).

Again, you do not have to be very accurate.

We are almost finished, but I thought that maybe duplicating this layer again by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (22) a moving it just a little bit to the right bottom could add the final touch.

It is not too much work and the label has even more details. And that is it, let’s move to the second line.

Transform & Assemble text effect

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To save some time, we will duplicate the last text box for the second line by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (23). It is faster than using the (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) shortcuts, because you can position it as the same time. In this case, move it below the first line and try to optically align it to the center.

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Click into this text box and overwrite the text with the words “& ASSEMBLE”. The label itself is not very readable, but that is fine for now.

For this second line of text, we want to keep the same style, but try something new and different. Trying other dash types would not make a big difference, so what about changing the Compound type to Double (24)? The text immediately looks different, like it is made from three lines. How is it possible when we have selected the double outline only?

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It is because of the Width settings. The outline is indeed made only from double line, but is it being drawn on both sides and the inner line is overlapping (25). Try to set a different Width and you will see a quite different result. How do I know that we need exactly 4,75 pt width to get this effect? It was just a coincidence.

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The only problem are the big gaps (26) which lowers the readability. We will fix this with another text box. Copy and paste the current one and move it to the exact same position as the previous one.

As mentioned above, changing the Width would only create more mess, not filling the gaps. We need to change the Dash type to anything different that what it is now – for example simple Dash (27).

The dashes are being drawn on different spots and thus filling the gaps of the underlaying text box. Finally change the Transparency settings to 70% (28) and your are done.

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

...

Retro text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “RETRO”, with font Arial, sized 110 pt (1). Make it center aligned (2) and change the font color to White (3).

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To change the page background color, go to ribbon Design › Page Color, and select the standard black color (4).

We want to have our text blurred, but the Blur Effect is only available for images, and the Soft Edges effect (which is almost the same as the blur effect) is only available for shapes. We need to find another way, that is, using other effects, namely Glow effect.

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Show the Format Shape pane (5) by right clicking over the text box border and selecting the Format Shape (6). Switch to Text Options (7) › Text Effects (8) and open the properties for the Glow effects.

Change the glow Color (9) to white to match the text color and Size to about 8 pt (10). Because the glow has the very same color as the text, it looks like if the text was blurred. The glow also adds a thick outline to the otherwise light text (compare it with the first screenshot).

Retro text effect

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To create an old TV screen effect, we will stuck up multiple “blurred” labels on top of each other, each one with sligtly different color. But before we do so, we need to have those label prepared.

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Start with duplicating the current label by dragging its border with the (Ctrl) key pressed (11). It is perfectly fine if you place it below the current label for now.

With the Format Shape pane still opened, click on the Color dropdown (12), select More Colors and from the Colors dialog (13), select the Lavender color (14).

Although it is not quite needed, we can also change the text color to the same one – using the font color dropdown on the Home ribbon (3).

Use the same technique to create another two instances of this text boxes, and change the colors of the glow effect and the font to Light Turquoise (15) and Green (16).

By the way, the primary monitor colors are RGB – red, green and blue, which are almost the colors which we have choosen for our labels.

Retro text effect

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You should know that every copied object is placed above the previous one, which means that our white text is now below every other label, and we need the exact opposite. Using the right click menu and commands Send to Back / Bring To Front may be an option, but it is far better to use the Selection Pane.

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Show it by selecting ribbon Home › Select › Selection pane. You can either drag any layer with the mouse (17) or use the Bring Forward, Send Backward buttons (18) to change the Z-order of any layer.

You should end up with white text on the top and all the color layers below. The exact order of those layers is not very important.

You can also use the Selection Pane to easily select any text box and use either mouse (19) or arrow keys to move it around. We want to have all the text boxes on the almost same position, but as you can see on the screenshot on the right, every color label should have a small offset.

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The Purple layer is moved to the right (20), the Blue to the left (21) and the Green is moved to the top left (22).

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The only missing thing is the scanline effect. Note that I have changed the page color to the white for the illustration purposes so you can see the objects better.

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Start with showing the grid by selecting ribbon View › Gridlines (23). After that, draw a rectangle from the ribbon Insert › Shapes › Rectangle (24) and draw it in a size to fit one “cell” in the grid (25). On the Format ribbon, change the Shape Fill to Black (26) and Shape Outline to No Outline (27).

If we would use this as a texture fill right now, the result would be pure black fill.

Why? Because the rectangle would repeat itself all over without any gaps. The question is, how to draw a gap?

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It is as easy as drawing another rectangle, again sized as one “cell” (28), placed below the black one. For this rectangle, not only set the Shape Outline to No Outline, but also the Shape Fill to No Fill (29). This makes the rectangle invisible, and it will create a gap in the texture fill later.

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Retro text effect

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We do not need the grid anymore, so hide it by unchecking the Gridlines checkbox on the View ribbon (23).

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The fill pattern can be defined in a several different ways. The easiest one is to copy it in the clipboard. To do this, select both rectangles (the black one and the transparent one) by clicking on them with the (Ctrl) key pressed (30). Copy them into the clipboard by pressing either the (Ctrl) + (C) shortcut, or by pressing the Copy button (31) on the Home ribbon.

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While we have our pattern in the clipboard, we need another shape which we will fill with this pattern. For this reason, draw another rectangle from the ribbon Insert › Shapes › Rectangle (32), and make it really big this time, so it covers all the text boxes (33).

With the Format pane visible, change the Line to No Line and Fill to Picture or texture fill (34). To fill this shape with our defined pattern, all you have to do is click the Clipboard button (35). The rectangle immediately gets the pattern from the clipboard, and even when the size is wrong, you can see the the upper half is black (36), while the lower half is transparent (37).

Our pattern is stretched to fill the whole rectangle evenly, but we need to repeat it multiple times so it creates the lines effect.

Retro text effect

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To repeat the pattern in the fill, check the Tile picture as texture checkbox (38).

The fill will be drawn in the same size as we have defined the pattern (39), which is much better, but still too big. Fortunatelly the Scale X and Scale Y values allows us to change the pattern size.

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Retro text effect

We do not need to care about the Scale X value, because the pattern is same in the X direction – it will look the same for any value. But if we change the Scale Y to 25% (40), our pattern will be four times smaller.

To make this effect more subtle, increase the Transparency of the fill to some higher number, for example 90% (41). If you have also temporarily changed the page color to white one, it is the right time to change it to black again.

The last step is optional. If you think that the scanlines effect is still too strong, you may consider moving this rectangle below the white text (42). That way, only the colored glows will be affected by those lines. Before you jump to the next tutorial, do not forget to hide (43) or delete our helper rectangles!

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Pencil fun text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the words “Pencil fun”, with font Cambria, sized 90 pt (1) and make it center aligned (2).

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After we apply the effect, the text will look like made of individual lines, so it may be a good idea to add some extra lines around the text box.

To do so, select ribbon Insert › Shapes › Line (3). This indeed allows us to draw a line, but only one! If we want to draw another line, we have to click this menu again, which could be quite slowing.

Copying and pasting (or duplicating) the already drawed line is not a good option either, as we want to have the lines in different direction and lenght.

Fortunatelly there is an easy way how to proceed. Open the Shapes dropdown again (4), but this time, right click on the Line button and select Lock Drawing Mode (5). This will keep the line tool selected until we end it by either right clicking anywhere in the document or by pressing the (Esc) key.

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But before we do that, draw as many lines as possible around the text (6). Do not care about the color or the width for now.

Pencil fun text effect

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Once you are done, select all the lines by choosing the select tool from the ribbon Home › Select › Select objects (8), and drawing a selection rectangle around all the objects (press the left mouse button in the left top corner, move it to the bottom right corner and release).

We have not only selected the lines, but also the text box. We do not want the text box to have any outline, so we have to deselect it. To do so, click on the text box border with the (Ctrl) key pressed (9).

The mouse cursor is again a little bit confusing, as it shows the plus sign (instead of minus), but you can just ignore it.

What is a bigger problem are the unselected lines. If you look closely, some lines do no have the handles visible (10), which means they are not selected. We have to individualy click on those lines with the (Ctrl) key pressed to make sure that we really have everything selected. I am sure you probably curse me know for telling you to draw so many lines.

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It looks better if you draw a longer lines closer to the text and shorter ones as you move away from the text, but it is not required.

If you accidentally draw a wrong line, you can select it afterwards and delete it with the (Delete) key. You can as well drag any handle of any line to make it different lenght or direction. Do not get confused with the mouse cursor (7), you can really move it to any direction.

After you have everything selected, right click on any line and from the Outline dropdown, select the Black color (11) and set the Width to 3 pt (12). We will probably use a bigger width for some lines later to add some randomness, as well as draw some lines over the text itself.

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To make the effect more random, select few lines (with the (Ctrl) key pressed) and from the right click Outline dropdown, select different Width – for example 6 pt (13).

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This is the maximum width which can be set from here. If we want a bigger one, we have to click the More Lines item (14), which will show the Format Shape pane (15). Here you have the Width edit box (16) where you can enter any value you want using either the keyboard or the up and down arrow buttons.

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The second thing we can do before applying the effect is drawing some lines over the text. We will use a white color later to turn those lines into “gaps” in the text.

Same as the last time, select ribbon Insert › Shapes, right click on the Line button and select Lock Drawing Mode. Than draw a few lines over the text (17). When you are satisfied with the number of lines, end the drawing by pressing the (Esc) key, select all the lines with the (Ctrl) key pressed and right click to change the Width to 3 pt and color to White (18).

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The screenshot on the right shows the lines in the green color so you can see them better.

Pencil fun text effect

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We have everything ready to apply the effect, but before we do so, we need to have our objects as a single raster image (not as a text box and a lot of vector lines as they are right now).

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As stated in the introduction, there are two ways of converting anything into the raster image. First one is to copy the objects into the clipboard ((Ctrl) + (C)), and Paste Special from the paste submenu as PNG, GIF or JPG image (there are differences between those formats, but they are not important right now). This method is not always accurate, and in order to have a big image, we need to have all the objects big already (which we do not have). The second method (and preffered in this case) is to simply create a screenshot of the entire screen (i.e. printscreen it) and paste it as an image.

As already stated, to keep all the details, we need to have the image in the biggest size possible. That means that we need our objects to occupy most of the screen space on the computer screen. To do so, click on the Ribbon Display Options (19) and select Auto-hide Ribbon (20). This will not only hide the ribbon (and all the other controls), but also maximizes the application window, which is exactly what we need.

The only problem is that we have lost the controls to zoom-in a view (in the bottom right corner), but we can use a shortcut – press the (Ctrl) key on the keyboard and use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom-in or out (this shortcut works in many other applications as well). The second method to zoom-in is to click on the invisible ribbon on the top (21), which will temporarily show all the control, including the bottom ones. They will disappear once you click inside the document again. With this information in mind, zoom-in and set the view so you can see all the objects in the biggest size possible. Do not worry if you do not have some oversized monitor with full HD (or bigger) resolution – even some average one is still fine.

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Now we need to take a snapshot of the screen. We can either use the (Printscreen) key on the keyboard to copy the entire screen (or screens) to the clipboard, or we can use (Alt) + (Printscreen) shortcut to copy only the active window (in our case Word). After pressing one of the shortcuts above, we need to paste this image back into the Word. To have some order, we will paste it on separate page.

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Before doing that, we can again show the ribbon by clicking on the Ribbon Display Options (22) and selecting Show Tabs and Commands (23).

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To move the text cursor below the objects, zoom-out a view and double click with the mouse into the empty space (24). Than either press the (Enter) key multiple times, or select ribbon Page Layout › Breaks › Page to jump to the next page.

When you have your text cursor placed on the second page, finally press the (Ctrl) + (V) shortcut to paste our image (25).

It contains some unnecessary parts like the scrollbar (26) or the gray areas (27), but that is nothing what we can not remove. The image is a raster image, and we can finally apply some effects to it.

Pencil fun text effect

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Crop the image from the left top (31) and right bottom (32) corners, so you can only see the white background. After you are done, either press the (Enter) or (Esc) key to deselect the crop tool and hide the cropped parts of the image (which are shown in a dark-gray color when cropping).

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Pencil fun text effect

To remove the unnecessary parts, right click on the image and select the Crop tool (28). When cropping, look closely at the mouse cursor. The right one (for cropping) looks like the frame (29), while the resize cursor (30) will only change the size of the image. You can crop the image either from sides or from the edges, which is faster.

The hand-written effect is just few clicks away. Right click on the image and select Format Picture (33) to show the format pane. In the Artistic Effects submenu, select Pencil Grayscale (34). The image will immediately look different (35), not very good, but closer to our purpose. We just need to show more details, get rid of the light red color and somehow use a colored background. Do not worry, it sounds harder than it really is!

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To add some details, decrease the Pencil Size value (36) on the effect settings. The exact value depends on the image size and on your preferences. Pretty much anything from 1 – 10 pt looks nice.

For bigger values (over 20 pt), the text becomes unreadable.

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The Transparency settings (37) changes the transparency of the effect over the original image. For value 0%, only the effect will be visible, value 100% will only show the original image. Values in between will mix those two images together, which can produce interesting results, but we will not use it this time.

We need to get rid of the light red background. The color is not a problem, but the light scribble pattern (38) is. It would make it harder to place it over the solid color background, and it draws attention from our message (and truth be told, I do not like it).

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- contrast

Before actually changing anything, let’s look at the Brightness/ Contrast presets (39) which we have available in Word. The preset in the middle is the current image with no changes.

Brightness is increased for presets on the right, and decreased on the left. Contrast is decreased on the top, and increased to the bottom. You can clearly see that for every presets in the two rightmost columns, the background becomes white (which is what we want).

What you can not see on the small previews is that for the rightmost column presets (with Brightness set to +40%) we loose a lot of details.

- brightness

To change some really light color (like our light red) to white, we just need to make everything brighter. At the same time, the black text will become very dark gray color, but the change will be very small and almost unnoticeable.

current image

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+ contrast white background Pencil fun text effect

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I hope you are not confused with all the Brightness and Contrast settings, because setting the right values will be really easy. On the Format Picture pane (40), switch to the Picture tab (41) and open Picture Corrections settings. Here we can either select from the presets (the ones shown on the previous page), or tweak the values manually. The presets are better for the beginning, since they immediately shows the result.

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Pencil fun text effect

As already mentioned on the previous page, the preset in the middle (42) shows the current image without any changes applied to it. We need a little bit more Brightness, so we select the preset (43) right next to the current one (the Contrast setting is the same – unchanged – for the whole row). The background turns into the solid white color, but we loose some details in the text. If you look closely at the tooltip for the selected presets (44), you can notice the values Brightness: +20%, Contrast: 0%. What if the 20% for the Brightness is unnecessarily too much?

We can find it out. Use either the slider or click on the bottom arrow (45) to keep decreasing the Brightness value while still keeping the background white. You will notice that the value 10% is still fine, we have the background in plain white color and we get some text details back – compare the “f” letter (46).

The very last step is changing the background color. Open the Picture Color settings (47) and open the presets for the Recolor (48).

The first row includes special effects (grayscale, sepia, black and white), second row changes the background color and the third one changes the color of our black text. The number of possible colors is limited, but the first one Blue-Gray (49) looks quite nice. And that is it!

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Green text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type the word “green”, with font Calibri, sized 130 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3).

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To spice up a text a little bit, we will add few leaves growing from the text. We will not draw anything, but use a symbols from the font Segue UI Symbol instead (by the way – this font contains a lot of nice symbols).

To insert a new symbol, select ribbon Insert › Symbols › More Symbols (6), and in the Symbol dialog, select the font Segoe UI Symbol (7). Scroll down to locate the Fallen Leaf (8) and Seedling (9) symbols. Do not forget to insert each symbol in a separate text box.

Green text effect

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We can also change the color right away – click on the Font Color dropdown menu (4) and select the Light Green (5) from the Standard Colors.

Before we do so, we need a separate text box. We can create a new text box with not fill and no outline, or we can duplicate the current one by dragging its border with the (Ctrl) key pressed. It is faster, and as a bonus, the font color is already set.

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Copy those two text boxes several times by either dragging them with the (Ctrl) key pressed, or you can as well use the well-known shortcuts (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) to copy and paste them.

Move those leaves so they look like they grow from the text. Change the font size for more random look and even rotate them (10) to break the evenness. Do not worry if the leaf symbol is visible also inside the text (11), we will solve this in a minute.

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We will “fill” those holes in the “g” and “e” letters. Why? Because we need some solid ground for the water drops. The bigger solid shape we have, the bigger can the water drops be.

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Green text effect

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To do so, select ribbon Insert › Shapes › Oval (12) and draw four oval shapes over the text (13). Change the fill color by right clicking over the shapes and selecting the green color from the Fill dropdown (14).

It looks nice, but maybe too “filled”.

What about adding another text box with the white Four Leaf Clover symbol (15) over the upper part of the letter “g”? I am pretty sure you already know how to do it.

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The label is complete so we can move to the water drop. We will use an ordinary circle as a base. Before drawing, zoom-in a view so you can see the text better – you can use for example the (Ctrl) key together with the mouse wheel to.

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Draw a circle from the ribbon Insert › Shapes › Oval (16) with the (Shift) key pressed to form a circle (17). Set the outline to No Outline and the Fill to the same green color as the text. After that, select the Fill color again and select More Fill Colors to bring up the Colors dialog (18). In here, move the luminosity slider more to the top (19) to define a light green color. The final value are RGB: 180, 222, 134. Move this light green circle over the letter “e”.

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You can only set the fill and the outline from the right click menu, for the rest of the things, there is a Format pane. To show it, right click on the circle and select Format Shape (20).

With the Format pane opened, select Effects (21) and open 3D Format properties. Open the Top bevel dropdown menu and select Circle (22). The circle immediately starts looking like the 3D sphere with the proper shading and highlights.

Green text effect

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While the object looks pretty much like the drop, it does not look like a transparent water. We have to change the material and adjust the lightning.

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To change the material, open the Material dropdown menu (25) and select the Translucent Powder (26). The object becomes more subtle with less shadows and more highlights.

To change the lighting, open the Lighting dropdown menu and select Balance (27). This light setup consists of two strong lights, which will increase the highlights even more.

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Green text effect

When you zoom-in to a maximum level (500%), you can notice that our sphere is cut off on the “top” (23). This can be fixed by increasing the Width and Height values for the Top bevel to 7 pt (24).

We just need to adjust the direction from which the lights shine. Right now, the main (bigger) light shines from the bottom (28), which is quite unusual. It is preffered to place the main light source from the top – just like the sun shines.

We need to increase the Angle value (29) until the main light shines from the top.

The right value is about 130°.

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The water drop looks nice, but too much faded and without any contrast. We can fix it by adding the drop shadow effect.

With the Format Shape pane opened, open the Shadow effect properties and from the Presets dropdown menu (30), select the Offset Diagonal Bottom Right (31). Set the Transparency to 50% (32) and Size to 80% (33). We also want this shadow more on the bottom, so change the Angle to 70° (34) and finally move it a little bit away from the object by increasing the Distance to 5 pt (35).

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The shadow is a bit too strong, which can be fixed by either decreasing the Transparency, or using a different color – like the dark green (36) from the Color dropdown menu. Remember that shadows with a tint of a color look more natural.

The last effect to add is the Reflection.

You do not need to select any preset this time, just set the Size to 70% (37), and zero all the other values. Why? We want this effect to be right below the drop, therefore the Distance should be 0 pt, and we want to have this effect quite visible, therefore the Transparency should be 0%. What about the Blur setting?

Green text effect

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It is indeed a good idea to blur the reflection a little bit – change the Blur to 2 pt for the final look (38).

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The water drop is done and we can duplicate it multiple times over the text by dragging its border with the (Ctrl) key pressed (39). You will soon realize that this water drop is probably too big and it would be great to have another one – much smaller.

Creating the smaller water drop is as easy as duplicating the big one and resizing it (40) with the (Shift) key pressed (to keep the aspect ratio). Everything looks fine except for the center of the drop – the 3D setting is too big for a water drop this size.

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To fix it, open the 3D Format setting and decrease both the Width and Height of the Top bevel to 4 pt (41). You can also optionally lower some properties of the Shadow effect – Size to 70% and Distance to 4 pt.

Finally duplicate this smaller water drop multiple times over the label, and you are done.

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Distracted Message text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “Distracted�, with font Franklin Gothic Medium, sized 72 pt (1). Make it Italic (2), and wide enough (3) so the text will still fit if we change it to something else later on.

Because we will use white rectangles to hide parts of the text, it is a good idea to temporarily change the page background to some different color. This way we can easily see and move those rectangles, and change the page background color back to white once we are satisfied with the result. Jump to the ribbon Design, Page Color (4) and select for example some light gray color (5).

Switch to the ribbon Insert (6), click the Shapes dropdown menu (7) and select Rectangle (8). Draw a rectangle over the text so it hides approximately the upper 2/3 of the text (9). Make sure that the rectangle is wide enough, it will make selecting this object much easier in a later stage.

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Select the rectangle, show the Format ribbon (10), and set the Shape Fill (11) to white color and the Shape Outline (12) to No Outline (13).

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Select the text box again (14) and copy and paste it using the (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) shortcuts. It may be not very visible on the picture on the left, but the pasted object is always pasted on the top of everything else. In our case over the white rectangle, which is what we want.

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Drag the bottom resize handle (15) to change the text box size in a way that the bottom part of the text gets cropped.

Drag the text box over the white rectangle (16), and to better see the result, we can quickly change the page background color back to white (17). If you like the result (18), change the page background color back to the gray color and it is time to repeat the whole process all over again.

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Distracted Message text effect

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Instead of drawing a new rectangle, we can select the old one and copy and paste it. This way we do not need to set the fill color again, we just have to move it over the second text box (19).

The next step is to select one of the text boxes, copy and paste it, resize it to be even more cropped from the bottom (20), and move it over the rectangle (21). A little misalignment is nothing to be afraid of (22), as we aim for a random and messy look.

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The upper part of the label is still too much unified, but repeating the process from the previous page should not take a long time. In case you forgot it – we need to select any rectangle, copy and paste it and move it over the top part of the text (23). We also need to do the same with one of the text boxes (24), and as you can see, the misalignment is in this case very big. Just make sure that there are no extremely tiny pieces (25), which can look like an error. To fix it, move the rectangle a little bit around using the keyboard arrow keys.

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Change the page backgroud color to white using the ribbon Design › Page Color. If everything looks fine (26), we can keep the background color.

We want to have a two line message. Instead of creating it from scratch, we can just reuse what we already have. To select everything, a (Ctrl) + (A) shortcut is not enought. We need to show the Selection pane (27). Select ribbon Home, Select › Selection Pane (28), and in this pane, click on every line with the (Ctrl) key pressed (29). There should be four text boxes and three rectangles. The actual names may vary, but it is not important.

Distracted Message text effect

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Distracted Message text effect

With everything selected, copy those objects (Ctrl) + (C) and paste them (Ctrl) + (V). This will create another seven objects (30). In order to prevent confusion, click on the eye symbol on the right side (31) and hide everything except for the first text box (32). Click inside this text box (33), and rewrite the word from “Distracted” to “Message”.

Unhide the next rectangle and text box by either clicking on the eye symbols, or on the items itself, and repeat the rewrite process (34). When clicking inside the text box, make sure that you click closely to the top (35), so the right text box gets selected.

Repeat the same process two more times until all four text boxes contain the same word “Message”. Optionally you can select all seven objects for this label, and move everything more to the right (36), so both lines are optically aligned to the center. As you can see on the preview, the second line looks different enough, even when we have used the first line objects as a base.

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Both lines of text are messy enough and the effect is great, but the space in between them is empty and a little bit boring. Instead of drawing some custom random shapes, we can reuse the same technique and display parts of some random characters.

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To do so, copy and paste any text box (37), and enter some random characters like “t”, “l”, “f” or “i”. As usual, resize the text box using the bottom resize handle (38) in a way the part of letters do not remain letters, but some random shapes instead. Move this text box next to the labels (39). The top part of teh “f” character is rounded and do not match the other rectangular shapes, but it is fine as this is close to the rounded “g” letter (40).

Use the very same technique multiple times, each time with a different letter, different text box height and a different position. In the screenshot on the right, three more text boxes are used (41) to optically fill the white space in between the labels, and to create some mess around. Because the width and tilt of the random particles matches the letters (42), the resulting effect is chaotic yet still consistent enough. And that´s it!

Distracted Message text effect

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The effect is finished, but you may want to know how to change the labels to a different message. The very first step is to make sure that nothing is selected – the text cursor is in the left top corner (43), not inside any text box.

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Distracted Message text effect

After this, show the Find and Replace dialog by either pressing the (Ctrl) + (H) shortcut, or by selecting ribbon Home › Replace. Type word “Distracted” into the Find What field (44), and a new text into the Replace with field (45). If you have done everything right, clicking the Replace All button (46) will change all four instances of this text, and show you the confirmation message box.

Because the second line of the text is made of different text boxes, we need to repeat the process one more time. With the Find and Replace dialog still opened (47), type “Message” into the Find what field (48), and a new text into the Replace With field (49). Again, clicking the Replace All button will replace all four instances (50). The only work that remains is to tweak the position of the helper random characters and to optionally adjust the alignment, as it was done manually.

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Chocolate text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “Chocolate”, with font Calibri, sized 90 pt (1). Make it Bold (2), and Italic (3).

To spice up a text a little bit, we will add a splashing drop symbol at the end of the text. With the text cursor still in this text box (4), select ribbon Insert, Symbol › More Symbols (5). In the Symbols dialog, change the Font to Segoe UI Symbol (6), and scroll all the way down to locate the “Splashing Sweat Symbol” (7). Insert it by either double clicking on the preview, or by pressing the Insert (8) button.

The preview immediately shows the inserted symbol which is distorted in an unpleasant way (9). We still have the Italic and Bold options set for this text, and because the selected font does not contain those styles, Word simply tilts this symbols and makes it bolder (see chapter XXXXXXXXXXXXX for details).

Close the Symbol dialog box, select only the symbol (10), and uncheck the Bold and Italic buttons (11). We can also set the size to only about 36 pt (12) to make the symbol less apparent.

Chocolate text effect

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We want to have a really subtle gradient fill in a dark brown chocolate-like color, with a lighter color on the top and darker on the bottom. This kind of shading looks very natural as the sun also shines from the top, forming a highlight on the top and shadow on the bottom.

The standard gradient is fine for the start, just make sure that the gradient Type is set to Linear (19), and Angle to 270째 (20). It can be set to 90째 as well, but in that case, the gradient stops will be reversed. There should also be only two gradient stops, if you see more, select them individually and delete them with the Remove gradient stop button (21).

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Show the Format pane (14) by right clicking the text box border and selecting Format Shape (15). In this pane, switch to the Text Options (16), Text Fill & Outline (17), and change the Text Fill from the Solid Fill to Gradient Fill (18).

Select the second gradient stop (22), open the Color dropdown (23) and select More Colors (24). From the Colors dialog (25), select a dark brown color (26). Set the very same color also for the first gradient stop (27), so we now have a gradient which looks like a solid color.

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Instead of tweaking the gradient colors using the Color dialog, we will utilize the Brightness settings. Select the first gradient stop (28) which defines the bottom color, and lower the Brightness settings to -30% (29). Notice how the bottom part of the letter gets darker. We can as well make a top part a little bit brighter.

Select the second gradient stop (30), and increase a Brightness settings just a little bit – for example by 5% (31). The gradient is still subtle, but more visible.

With the Format pane still opened, open the Effect tab (32), Shadow settings (33), and from the Presets dropdown (34), select the Inside Diagonal Top Left (35). With a standard settings, this effects forms a text inset into the surface (36), but we want it to create a highlight instead.

Open the Color dropdown menu (37), select More Color (38), and in the Colors dialog, select the light orange color (39). Because we do not want the highlight to be blurred that much (40), lower the Blur settings to 2 pt (41), and also set the Distance to only 3 pt (42). The result is a nice highlight with orange tint coming from the top left corner.

Chocolate text effect

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To create a nice looking 3D effect, a highlight alone is often not enough – we also need a of shadow to complete the effect.

We cannot add another inner shadow to the text, as this would remove the previous shadow effect, but we can add a text outline to fake an inner shadow effect.

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To have a bigger shadow, increase the outline Width to about 2 pt (45). This will make the text bolder, but it is fine in this case.

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Chocolate text effect

In the Format pane, switch to the Text Outline and change it to Gradient Line (43). Repeat the steps from the previous pages to get the very same gradient as is used for the fill (44).

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Now comes the magic part. Select the second gradient stop (46) and decrease the Brightness to -10% (47). Optionally, you can also decrease the brightness even more for the first gradient stop (48), from -30% to -40%. What happened? The text now has a little bit darker bold outline, but because the orange shadow effect (i.e. highlight), is being drawn over this outline, the outline is visible only where the highlight is not visible. This creates both shadow and highlight effect.

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To make the text stand out even more, we will add an additional white outline. First change the page background on ribbon Design › Page Color (49), and select Orange color (50).

Select the text box, copy and paste it, and move it next to the text for now (51). In the Format pane, open the Effects tab (52), Shadow settings (53), and remove the shadow effect by selecting the preset No Shadow (54). Notice how different the text looks without this effect.

For this almost-white outline, we will also use the Brightness settings. Open the outline settings, and set the Orange color (55) for both gradient stops (56). Select the first gradient stop again (57), and increase the Brightness to 40% (58). Select the second gradient stop (59), and increase the Brightness to have almost a white color – to 90% (60). Because the outline width is still the same, the outline would be invisible once placed below the previous text box. We need to increase it to about 8 pt (61).

While the wrongly looking fill (62) is nothing to worry about, we can set the very same gradient fill as we have used for the outline. Just to make sure that everything will look right.

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The second text layer is ready, we just need to move it to the exactly same spot as the previous text box (63). An auto snap feature should ensure the perfect alignment. If not, check if it is turned on (Page Layout › Align › Grid Settings › Snap objects to other objects). Right click on this text box and select Send to Back (64), to have the white outline layer below the chocolate one (65).

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To separate this label from the background, we can add a drop shadow for the white outline text box. If you have already deselected this text box, a Selection pane has to be used to select it again (Home › Select › Selection Pane).

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In the Format Pane, open the Effects tab (66), Shadow settings (67), and from the Presets dropdown menu (68), select Offset Bottom (69). The default settings looks fine, only the color does not really match the yellow-orange-brown color scheme. Open the Color dropdown menu (70), and select some dark not very saturated red color (71). Remember that shadows do not always have to be black – they mostly have some tint. Compare the screenshots on the left to see how a simple color change can make a big difference.

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We will add a subtle pattern to a background. Create a new text box with no outline and no fill, and make it quite big.

With a text cursor placed in this text box, select ribbon Insert › Symbol › More Symbols (72). In the Symbols dialog, select Font Segoe UI Symbol (73), and scroll down until you see a symbol Teacup Without Handle (74). Insert it and close this dialog. Copy and paste this symbol multiple times (75) using the shortcuts (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V). It is a good habit to insert a space between those symbols, as it helps with proper hyphenation. On the other hand, it is not necessary to insert multiple spaces, we will adjust the spacing in a different way.

The font size is 36 pt (76).

On the Home ribbon, open the Line and Paragraph spacing menu (77) and select double spacing – 2.0 (78). Open the Font settings (79), and in the Advanced tab (80), set the Spacing to Expanded, and set it to some bigger number (81).

To see the result, you have to confirm this dialog. Our goal is to have the symbols spaced evenly in both horizontal and vertical axis (82), so you have to experiment with the proper Spacing value to get it looking right. The value of 24 pt seems to be about right in our case.

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Creating a pattern with polka dot-like spacing is easier than it seems. Select the text box and drag its border with the (Ctrl) pressed (83), which will create a copy. Move it in a way that the cup symbols are in the middle of the other ones, forming a diamond pattern instead of rectangular one.

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The black font color for this pattern is too distinct, a light orange would be better.

There is one thing to be aware of – you can set a standard font color even when you have multiple text boxes selected, but once you try to apply a custom color, nothing happens. For this reason, it is better to have only one text box selected at a time.

Select one of the text boxes, and use either standard Font color dropdown (84) or Format pane to set the orange color (85). Open this dropdown again, and select More colors (86). In the Colors dialog (87), switch to the Custom tab (88), and move the brightness slider a little bit up (89). It is very similar as adjusting the Brightness value for the gradient colors, except we have to use this dialog as there is no such option anywhere else. The final RGB values are shown on the screenshots: 255, 218, 101.

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Select also the second text box with the black cup symbols and set the very same fill color using the Font color dropdown menu (90). The previously selected color should be in the Recent Colors menu, it is the one on the very left (91).

Show a Selection pane (92) (ribbon Home › Select › Selection Pane), and move those two pattern text boxes below the labels by either dragging them or pressing the Send Backwards button (93). It is also the right time to have everything centered on the page. Do not forget to move the label text boxes together – to select both objects, click on the individual lines with the (Ctrl) key pressed.

Zoom out to see most of the page and draw a very big rectangle (94) from the Insert › Shapes menu. Using the Format pane, set the outline to No Outline, and Fill to Gradient Fill (95). Set the Type to Radial (96), and Direction to From Center (97). If those previews are empty (i.e. looking empty), you can temporarily set some random color for the gradient stops to make sure that the gradient is really being drawn the way we want it to.

We will change those color later anyway.

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Select the second gradient stop (98), and set the color to Orange (99) – the same color as is used for the background.

Set the same orange color also for the first gradient stop (100), but this time increase the Transparency all the way up to 100% (101). This will make the center part of the rectangle transparent (102), so you can see the underlying layers. Because the gradient type is set to Radial, the transparent middle part in the rectangle creates a spotlight effect.

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angle are faded too, which looks almost like in a fog, and it lowers the readability.

We should move the rectangle below the labels using the Selection pane and dragging the rectangle item (103), or pressing the Send Backwards button (104).

We can also adjust the rectangle size to really be only over the pattern text boxes (105), and not over the whole page.

The uneven alignment of the white outline (106) is only caused by an inaccurate rendering in a different zoom level. If you want to force it to look this way, move this layer a little bit downwards by pressing the down arrow key on the keyboard.

And that´s it!

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Confidential text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “CONFIDENTIAL”, with font Impact, sized 68 pt (1). The exact size is not very important, but make it big enough. There is no reason to make the label bold or italic as the selected font does not contain those styles, and it would not look good.

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Select the text, open the Font Color dropdown menu (2), and select More Colors (3). In the Colors dialog (4), select a bright orange color (5).

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The next step is to draw a rounded rectangle around this text. Jump to the ribbon Insert (6), open the Shapes dropdown menu (7), and select Rounded Rectangle shape (8). Draw it around the text in a way that it is evenly spaced on all sides.

You do not have to be very precise during the drawing though, as you can resize it afterwards and also move it around with the arrow keys. Before doing so, switch to the ribbon Format and change the Shape Fill (9) to No Fill (10), so you can see the text beneath. Depending on the text size, the rounded rectangle corners may need some adjustments to not be too much rounded – optionally use the yellow handle (11) to tweak them.

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The Format ribbon includes some basic settings also for the outline, but it allows to set the maximum line width to only 6 pt which is not enough. In order to have access to all settings, we need to show the Format Pane. Do it by right clicking the shape and selecting Format Shape (12).

In there, set the line Width to 10 pt (13), and also use the Color dropdown (14) to change the line color to light gray color (15). Later, we will change the page background color to black, so the yellow label will stand out more than the gray outline.

Jump to the ribbon Insert again (16), open the Shapes dropdown (17) and select a Text Box (18). Draw it over both text box and rounded rectangle to overlap in all sides (19). Use the Format Pane to set the Outline to No Outline and Fill to No Fill.

In the Insert ribbon, select Symbol › More Symbols (20) to show the Symbol dialog (21). Scroll down to see those tiny little symbols which are meant to be used as a diacritical marks (22). If you cannot see them, try changing the Font from (normal text) to Calibri instead (23).

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Change the font size to 24 pt (24), and start adding some random symbols by double clicking the previews, by or clicking the Insert button. There is one specialty about those diacritical symbols – they get stacked on top of each other, not moving the text cursor to the right side.

It makes sense as they are meant to add a diacritical part to a letters which does not contain them.

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If you insert symbols (25), (26) and (27), you get all those three symbols on the very same spot (28) (it accidentally looks like a smiley). This gives us a unique ability to create a very random looking “stacks” from those symbols.

We do not want to stay in one place thought. In order to have also other areas filled with those symbols, we need to click into this text box from time to time and press a spacebar to insert a space. After few minutes of clicking, we can have something like this (29).

To check how those imperfections and scratches will look like, we can quickly open the Font Color dropdown menu (30), and change the color to a White (31). Keep in mind that the result will look different once we apply an Artistic Effect.

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We will not keep the page background color to white, but use some very dark color instead. Jump to the ribbon Design, open Page Color (32) and select More Colors (33).

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In the Colors dialog, move the brightness slider down (34) so we have almost the black color, move the crosshair into the blue region (35), and also downwards to have the blue tint very desaturated. The final RGB values are: 54, 54, 64. Those values should also tell you that the color is almost gray, as the gray would have values of 54, 54, 54 (for more information, read XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX)

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Use the Font Color dropdown (36), to change the random characters text also to this color – it should be in the Recent Colors (37).

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In the next page, we will insert a screenshots of this label. It will be inserted where the cursor is, so it is a good idea to move the cursor to a next page. Zoom out to see a whole page, and double click with the cursor below the label (38). This will move a cursor there, even when there is no text there. Press the (Enter) key several times to jump to a next page (39), and we have everything prepared.

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To smoothen our random characters to look like scratches, we need to apply an Artistic Effects. This effect can be only applied to the raster image, which our text is not. For this reason, we need to convert it to a raster image by taking a screenshot of this label.

Maximize the Word application window (40), and zoom in (41) so you can only see the label in the biggest size possible.

Jump to the ribbon Insert (42), open the Screenshot dropdown menu, and select Screen Clipping (43). Before clicking this item, you should know that the application window will minimize, as Word thinks that you probably want to insert a screenshot of some other window. It will, however, give you about three seconds before taking the screenshot – use this time to maximize the Word window again. If something goes wrong, press the (Esc) key and start again.

When the screen washes out (44), click in the top left corner (45) and drag the cursor to the right bottom corner (46) – the same way you draw a rectangle inside Word. Make sure that you do not select any part of Word window like the ribbon or scrollbars. There is also no need to select a lot of the background.

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Right after releasing the mouse, the screenshot is inserted into Word at the text cursors position. If you have followed the steps from the previous pages, it should be on the second page, leaving our “base” objects on the first page.

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Select this newly inserted image and with the Format pane opened, open tab Effects (47), Artistic Effects, and from the Artistic Effects dropdown (48), select Paint Brush (49).

This effects takes the image and “blurs” it in a way that the edges still remain sharp.

The Brush Size controls the amount of the effect, and as in almost any other effect, can be set from 0 (no effect), to 10 (maximum effect). The screenshots on the left shows different results for different settings.

As you can see, the effect smoothens out the edges, so for example the L shape (50) gets rounded (51) with the Brush Size set to 5, and almost an invisible scratch (52) with the maximum settings.

Random characters around the edges create interesting shapes (53), and for the higher settings, it is definitively not obvious that we have used diacritical symbols as a starting point.

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The final Brush Size value should be big enough, but probably not the maximum one. The image on the right shows the value of 8 (54), which seems to be about right. Since the effect is affected not only by the effect settings, but also by the random characters and the text box position, there are thousands of different combinations. If you do not like the result, you can still use the objects from the first page, move the text box with random characters a little bit, repeat the process of taking the screenshot and applying the Artistic Effect, and the output will be always different.

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With the higher Brush Size setting, we lost a lot of details. We can restore some of them by mixing this image with the original one by increasing the Transparency value to about 20% (55). Some small parts which did get lost with the effect are back (56), and the effect looks more sophisticated.

The last step is to right click the image and select Wrap Text › In Front of Text (57), so we can move the image around the document freely. And that´s it!

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If you still do not have enough, the next few pages describe how to use this image as a page watermark.

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Scroll back on the first page and show the the Selection Pane (58) – open the ribbon Home › Select › Selection Pane (59), and in there, select all three objects – two text boxes and one rounded rectangle by clicking on the individual items with the (Ctrl) key pressed (60). If you cannot see those items (you see only item Picture instead), make sure you have the text cursor placed on the first page. Copy everything into the clipboard with (Ctrl) + (C), create a new empty document – (Ctrl) + (N) and paste those three objects with (Ctrl) + (V). It is possible that after pasting, some objects will be little misaligned, move them around if needed.

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If the Selection pane is hidden, show it again, select the random characters text box, and using the Font Color dropdown (61), change the font color to White (62). Select the text box with label Confidential, and use the same Font Color dropdown to change the font color to Black (63) (or Automatic).

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To use this image as a watermark, we need to make few adjustments. Standard documents usually have white background (i.e. no background), not the black as our text effect has. We need to start with converting our text effect into the black and white version with the white background. Unfortunately, there is no easy way how to create a negative from our picture, which means we need to repeat most of the process again.

You should already know the next steps, but just in case – move text cursor to a next page, zoom in to see the label as big as possible, insert a screenshot using the Insert › Screenshot › Screen Clipping function, open the Format pane by right clicking on that picture and selecting Format Picture, open the Effects tab (64), and apply Artistic Effect Paint Brush with Brush Size set to 8 (65) and Transparency set to 20% (66). If you are unsure with any of those steps, see previous pages for details.

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In order to use an image as a watermark, we need to save it as a picture first. Right click on the image, and select Save as Picture (67). In the Save dialog, it is possible to choose from different formats, but the .png image (68) is in most cases the best choice (see XXXXXXX XXXXXXXX for details). Choose any name you want (69), and confirm it by clicking the Save button (70). Of course do not forget the location of the file.

Back in Word, select ribbon Design and open the Watermark dropdown menu (71). There are multiple pre-defined watermarks, including Confidential ones, but the unevenly distorted text does not look very pleasing. Select Custom Watermark (72), which open a Printed Watermark dialog (73).

Two types of watermark can be applied inside Word – a Picture watermark, and a Text watermark. If you ever decide to use a text watermark in your document, make sure that you set the Size to some real number, not Auto (74) to prevent the text distortion. Because we want to use our text effect which is saved as an image, select the Picture watermark radio button (75).

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Click on the Select Picture button (76), and locate the previously saved image.

Keep the Scale to Auto (77), and the Washout checked (78). The image was saved with a black text, and keeping it not washed out could make the black text over the watermark unreadable. Click the OK button (79) and the watermarks is placed (80). You can even double click over this image and nothing happens – but what if you want to make some adjustments?

The truth is the watermark is not any special objects. It is a standard image, but to prevent it from being accidentally selected, it is placed inside the document Header. If you double click the top part of the document to jump into the header (81), you can select the watermark image (82) and maybe even rotate it with the green handle (83). The picture editing tools in the Format ribbon allows to not only turn of the Washout effect (84), but also to fine-tune the image to your needs.

In the end, you may think that the Watermark dropdown menu is not even needed, as we can paste an image directly to the document header. That may be true, but it is still a feature worth knowing. And that´s it!

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H2O text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “H2”, with font Calibri, sized 140 pt (1).

Make it Bold (2), select the character “2” and change it to Subscript (3).

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For the “O” letter, we will use a circle symbol instead, so we can place a water drop inside. To do so, move the text cursor to the end of the text by either pressing the (Æ) or (End) key, and turn off the Subscript by clicking on the (3) button again.

Jump into the ribbon Insert and from the Symbol dropdown menu, select More Symbols (4). The circle symbol is quite common that it is contained even in the current font, and we do not need to use a special dingbat fonts like Windings or Webdings. In the Symbol dialog, make sure that the font Calibri is selected (5) and scroll all the way down for the circle symbol (6). Insert it by double clicking.

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Note: this symbol is quite special, and its intended purpose is to enclose the previous character to form a symbols like this: Ⓐ. If you have any problems with this symbol, use a circle symbol from the previously suggested dingbat fonts instead.

It will, however, require some tweaking of the size and character position.

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In order to have a complete control over the text properties, we need to show a Format pane (7). Do it by right clicking over the text box and selecting Format Shape (8). Select Text Options (9) and change the Text Fill to Gradient Fill (10).

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Keep the Type as Linear but change the Angle to 90° (11) so the gradient will be drawn from the top to the bottom. Select the first gradient stop (12) and change the color to Light Blue (13). For the second gradient stop (14), change the color to Dark Blue (15). You can immediately see that the text is filled with the blue gradient, lighter on the top and darker on the bottom.

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As we want to tweak this gradient even more, it is a good idea to resize the Format pane (16) to have a really big preview of the gradient. Select the first gradient stop (17) and move it to the right, somewhere in the middle of the gradient.

After this, add a new gradient stop by either clicking anywhere in the gradient preview, or by clicking on the Add gradient stop button (18). Move it all the way to the left and from the Color dropdown menu, select light blue color (19). Compare the upper part of the “H” letter to see the difference (20).

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A strong highlight is pretty old effect, but it is still good to know how to create it inside Word. With the gradient preview displayed, click with the mouse between the first and the second gradient stop (21).

This creates a new gradient stop with a color from this position. In other words – right after clicking with the mouse, the gradient still looks the same, even when we have four gradient stops, not just three.

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The fun begins when we drag this newly created gradient stop closer to the third one (22) (the middle one). Since there is very small space to render a gradient from lighter blue to a darker blue color, the smooth transition becomes a strong one (23), forming the strong highlight.

The next step is to change the Text Outline from No Line to Gradient Line (24).

A Linear Type (25) with three gradient stops is again being used, but this time, the darkest color is even darker blue (26). The middle color is Light Blue (27), and the first one (28) is almost the same as in the fill gradient. This way, the outline blends into the fill around the top of the label (29). The Width setting is invisible on the screenshot, but it should be set to 1 pt.

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The outline forms a dark shadow on the bottom of the letters, but we are still missing some 3D highlight on the top.

With the Format pane still visible, select Text Effects tab (30), open Shadow properties (31), and from the Inner presets, select Inside Top. This will immediately create an inner shadow from the top (32), which makes the text look inset into the surface.

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To make it stand out, all we have to do is to change the Color (33), to some lighter one, for example the light blue (34). The highlight is however too much blurred, especially compared to the strong highlight created with the gradient fill. To fix it, change the Blur settings to 0 pt (35).

The shadow effects becomes strong and much more visible.

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While we are playing with the text effects, we can add one more – the Reflection (36). From the Presets (37), select the first one – Tight Reflection, touching.

Because the effect is being drawn only inside the text box area, notice it is being cropped on the bottom (38). The text box is too small. Unlike the inner shadow effect, the reflection could be also blurred much more than it is now.

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To fix the unwanted crop, resize the text box using the resize handle (39). Set the Blur to 10 pt (40), to make the reflection more subtle (and almost invisible).

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Select ribbon Insert › Shapes, and from the dropdown menu, select shape Teardrop (41). Draw it inside the circle symbol with the (Shift) key pressed to keep the proportions. After that, rotate it by dragging the rotation handle (42) also with the (Shift) key pressed. This way, the rotation snaps to the 45° value.

Because the drop is a symbol, and the rest is a text, there is no easy way how to apply the very same fill and outline to this symbol. We need to set all the gradients again – both gradient fill (43), and the gradient line (44). Because the shape is rotated by -45°, we need to either adjust the Angle to 135° (90°+ 45°) (45), or uncheck the Rotate with shape checkbox. The Shadow effect does not have this checkbox, so the only option here is to adjust the Angle value. Looking at the previous page, the Angle value for the text is 270°, therefore the new one should be 270° + 45° = 315° (46). If you do not want to do the math, you can as well click on the up and down arrows (47) to find the right value.

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The text and the drop symbol are complete and we can move to the background.

We cannot add the spotlight effect below the text as the background is already pure white, but we can add a shadow.

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In the Format pane, change the Line to No Line (52). Keep the Fill to Solid Fill, but change the color to Light Blue (53).

A blurred look can be achieved in two ways – we can either use a radial gradient fill, or apply the Soft Edges effect to a shape. The second one will be our choice for now.

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From the Insert ribbon (48), select the Shapes › Oval (49). Draw it around the whole text and make it even a little bit bigger (50). Word shows the shapes semi-transparent during the drawing, which makes getting the right side quite easy. Once the shape is created, we need move it below the text by right clicking and selecting Send to Back (51).

Open the Effects tab (54), Soft Edges effect (55), and increase the only parameter which controls the blurriness – the Size (56). The oval shape is pretty big, and so should be the Size value. There is a restriction of maximum value of 100, but 65 pt should be enough in this case.

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We can use the same technique to create the highlight over the tip of the drop symbol. Draw another Oval shape from the Insert › Symbol menu, but this time press a (Shift) key during the drawing to create a circle (57). Change the fill color to Light blue (58), open the Color dropdown menu again and select the More Colors (59) to show the Colors dialog (60). In there, switch to the Custom tab (61) and drag the brightness slider up (62) to have almost the white color. The final RGB values are shown on the screenshot: 225, 247, 255. You can tell even from these values that the color is almost white, as the white color has values 255, 255, 255 (see chapter XXX XXXXXXXX for more information).

With this very light blue color applied, switch to the Effects tab (63), and open the Soft Edges properties. The Presets are not very helpful here as they only change the Size. It is much faster to press and hold the up arrow button (64) to increase the value until you find the right one. If you have text cursor placed inside the edit box, you can also use keyboard up and down arrows to change the value. A Size set to 20 pt (65) seems to be about right for this highlight shape.

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The last thing which we can do is to spice up the background with some bubbles.

Select ribbon Insert › Shapes, and from the dropdown menu, select shape Donut (66). Draw it somewhere next to the text with the (Shift) key pressed to keep the proportions, and using the Format Pane, change the Line to No Line and fill color to light blue (67).

To blend the shape with the background even more, increase the fill Transparency to 60% (68). To make the bubbles random looking, we can not only change the size by resizing the shape with the (Shift) key pressed, but we can also adjust the width by dragging the yellow handle (69).

The fastest way to duplicate the shape multiple times is to drag it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (70). As described, use different sizes and different widths to get the random looking background.

There is one more trick how to change the object size without the need for using the resize handles. With the object selected, press the (Shift) key and any arrow key.

Up and right keys make the object bigger, left and down keys make it smaller. Press them together to make sure the shape is still a circle, not an oval. And that´s it!

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Origami text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “ORIGAMI”, with font Calibri, sized 120 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3).

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Since the text is quite big, the optional step is to jump to ribbon Page Layout › Orientation, and change the page orientation to Landscape (4) so the text fits better.

After that, we want to change the page background color. Jump to the ribbon Design › Page Color, and select More Colors (5) to show the Colors dialog. All the swatches in the Standard tab are too much saturated, we need to switch to the Custom tab (6) and select the color manually. The desaturated colors are on the bottom of the rainbow – move the crosshair more to the bottom and more to the right for some violet hue (7), and also move the brightness slider down (8) for a darker color. The final RGB values are: 54, 44, 56.

Right click on the text box border and select Format Shape (9) to show the Format Pane (10). In there, select Text Options (11), and open the Text Fill & Outline tab (12).

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Change the Text Fill from Solid Fill to Gradient Fill (13), keep the Type to Linear (14) and Angle to 90째 (15) to have it drawn from the top to the bottom. Select the first gradient stop (16) and using the Color dropdown menu (17), change the color to white. Select second gradient stop (18), and open the color dropdown menu again, select More Colors, and in the Colors dialog, select a light pink color (19). To have the gradient with more of the white and less of the pink, drag the first gradient stop (16) more to the right.

This non-transparent label will be the base object on top of which we will stack other text boxes.

Copy and paste this text box, and to see the results better, we can move it away for now (20). Using the Color dropdown menu (21), change the first gradient stop (22) to light orange (23), second gradient stop (24) to light pink (25), and add a third one (26) by clicking anywhere in the gradient preview and set the color to white. A new gradient stop can be also added using the Add gradient stop button (27). Move the gradient stops closer to each other as shown on the screenshot, and set the Angle to some random number, for example 290째 (28).

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Now comes the interesting part. Select the first gradient stop (29), increase the Transparency to 100% (30), and do the same also with the third gradient stop – the white one (31). This results to an orange blurred stripe (32), but we are still missing the strong transition.

To make it, drag the third white gradient stop (33) more to the left, over the position of the second gradient stop. You may get to a stage where you are exactly over the second gradient stop, but the transition is still not strong enough (34). In that case, the only solution is to reverse colors – set a white color to a second gradient stop and light pink to a third gradient stop, adjust the Transparency value accordingly and try it again for a better result (35). It takes time, but it is a price you have to pay for using a Word in a nonstandard ways.

To quickly create another “fold”, copy and paste this text box, move it to any place (36), and just change the Angle to any other random value, for example to 40° (37). We want to move all the three text boxes to exactly the same position. As a first step, select all three by clicking on them with the (Shift) key pressed.

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Switch to the Format ribbon, and from the Align dropdown menu, select Align Center (38), and Align Middle (39). The result is the white label with two “folds” over the middle part of the text (40).

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Setting a different Angle value for additional labels would only make the new folds around the center, which is not what we want. Click anywhere on the page to deselect those three objects, and click on the top one and duplicate it – you can again move it next to the other labels to see it better (41). Change the Angle value to 60° (42), but this time, also move the gradient stops (43) more to the right. You need to do it one by one, as you cannot select multiple gradients stops.

Duplicate this text box one more time, and only change the Angle value to 260° (44). Select ribbon Home › Select › Select Objects (45) tool, and draw a selection rectangle over the whole page to select everything. Use the Align Center and Align Middle functions from the Format ribbon to move everything on the same spot (46). Those four additional text boxes with transparent gradient fills already create an interesting effect, but it may be a good idea to add a splash of a different color.

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Click anywhere on the page and click on the text again to select the top most text box and copy and paste it. Because the third gradient stops covers the second one, the only way how to change the color for the second one is to temporarily move the third one more to the right (47), select the second one (48), and change the color to dark pink (49). Before moving the third gradient stop back to its place, we can also increase Transparency for this dark pink color to 30% (50), to blend it more with the background layers (51). The Angle for this fill is 320° (52).

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Duplicate this text box once more, and only change the Angle value to 110° (53). Looking at the picture, we can add additional darker gradients to edges, leaving the middle part orange, and the center around the “A” letter almost white.

For this reason, the next three duplicated text boxes has the gradient stops moved to the left (54), and the Angle values 200° (55), 330° (56) and 30° (57).

Bear in mind that those values as well as the gradient stops positions are random, and you definitively do not need them to be exactly the same as here.

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To work with ten text boxes, a Select Objects tool is not enough. Select ribbon Home › Select › Selection pane (58) to show the Selection Pane (59). Select all text boxes by clicking with the (Ctrl) key pressed (60), and align everything properly using the Align dropdown menu (61).

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To spice up the effect a little bit, we can add a reflection effect, but defining the effect for every single object could take forever. For this reason, keep all the text boxes selected and group them together using ribbon Format › Group › Group (62). Jump to the Format pane, open the Effects tab (63), Reflection effect settings (64), and select the first preset from the Presets dropdown (65). This reflection is however cropped by the text box borders (66), too visible, to focused and too big.

Resize the text boxes using the resize handle (67) to have some space for the effect, increase Transparency to 60% (68), lower the Size to only 30% (69), and increase the Blur to 10 pt (70). This way the reflection is more subtle, blurred, and quite small, so it does not drag the attention away from the folded origamilike fill. And that´s it!

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Patterns text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “PATTERNS”, with font Franklin Gothic Medium, sized 90 pt (1). If you make the text box bigger, it will be easier to select later.

To keep the patterns in a relatively same size, we need some guidance – show the gridlines on the ribbon View › Gridlines (2). The gridlines size can be adjusted in ribbon Page Layout › Align › Grid Settings, but the default settings is fine.

Because the pattern fills will be white, they would be invisible over the white background – we need to change it temporarily. Jump to the ribbon Design › Page Color (3), and select any color, for example light gray (4).

Switch to the ribbon Insert › Shapes › Diamond (5), and draw a diamond sized 2 × 2 boxes (6). Using the Format ribbon, change the Shape Outline to No Outline and Shape Fill to White (7). With the object still selected, copy it into the clipboard by pressing (Ctrl) + (C). This will be our pattern fill. As a next step, draw a rectangle over one of the letters, for example letter “N” (8). Right click over any object and select Format Shape (9) to show the format pane.

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With the Format pane visible (10), change the Fill to Picture or texture fill (11), and select Insert picture from Clipboard (12). Because we have copied the diamond into the clipboard in the previous step, the rectangle should fill with this image immediately (13). However, we do want multiple diamonds, not just one. To fix it, check the Tile picture as texture (14), and adjust the Scale X and Scale Y values to some smaller numbers, for example 20 % (15). The Offset values are not important, as we can adjust the exact position by moving the rectangle itself. If you want, you can temporarily change the page background color to white and hide the gridlines to see the result better (16).

The next pattern will be made out of lines.

From the Insert › Shapes menu, select Rectangle (17) and draw it 1 × 2 boxes big (18). Change the Shape Outline to No Outline, Shape Fill to white, copy it into the clipboard with (Ctrl) + (C), draw another bigger rectangle (19), and using the technique from above, use this newly defined pattern fill (20). The result is, however, plain white color (21), and not lines. It is because there is no free space between the lines (rectangles).

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To have some space between the lines, we need to add “something invisible” between them. That “something” can be another rectangle sized 2x2 boxes (22), with not only Shape Outline set to No Outline, but also Shape Fill set to No Fill (23). Select both objects with the (Shift) key pressed (24), and copy them into the clipboard with (Ctrl) + (C). Select the bigger rectangle, and select Insert picture from Clipboard (25).

Check the Tile Picture as texture (26), and lower the Scale X and Scale Y vales to 20% (27) and you have a nice looking stripe fill (28).

This fill is not being drawn only over the “P” letter, but also over the part of “A” letter (29). We need to fix it. Right click the shape, select Edit Points (30), and move the right bottom point more to the left (31). As you can see, the fill was not affected at all.

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This is great, because we can copy and paste this shape, move it over the “E” letter (32), and rotate it by 45° – by dragging the rotation handle (33) with the (Shift) key pressed. Use the same Edit Point function to adjust the points to form a rectangle (34), and we have a rotated fill with a very small effort.

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The next pattern fill can be made of circles. Switch to the Insert › Shapes › Oval (38), and draw a circle sized 2x2 boxes (39), with no outline and white fill. If we copy this circle into the clipboard and use it as a fill right away, the result is too tightly spaced (40), leaving the underlying “A” letter almost invisible.

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With this new information in mind, we can do the same with the diamond fill.

Copy and paste the rectangle, rotate it by 45° (35), right click, select Edit Points (36), and drag individual points to have the shape only over the “S” letter (37).

You are of course not limited to 45° rotation, as the angle can be really any.

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We need to use the same technique as with the line pattern to add some space around. Draw a rectangle sized 3x3 boxes (41), and set the Shape Outline to No Outline, and Shape Fill to No Fill (42).

Select both circle and rectangle with the (Shift) key pressed, copy them into the clipboard with (Ctrl) + (C) and use it as a fill (43). Because we have a pattern sized 3 × 3 boxes, we need to lower the Scale X and Scale Y values to 15% (44) to approximately match the size of the other patterns.

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In order to keep the dotted fill only over the “A” letter, we need to use the Edit Point function and adjust the individual points to form a trapezoid shape (45).

We can copy and paste this shape again, rotate it by 45° (46), and move it over the “R” letter. Adjust the points with the Edit Points function and another pattern fill is done (47).

The next two pattern fills can be made of skewed rectangles. From the Insert › Shapes menu, select Parallelogram (48), and draw it 3 × 2 boxes big (49).

Adjust the shape by dragging the yellow handle (50) to make it slightly thinner, copy it into the clipboard (Ctrl) + (C) and use it as a pattern fill (51). The fill, however, looks broken – the repetition is clearly visible, which is something to usually avoid when working with patterns.

Instead of tweaking the shapes, we can play with the fill settings, namely Mirror Type, which is by default set to None. A Horizontal setting (52) does not help much, but the Vertical (53) creates a nice jagged pattern. A Mirror Type set to Both (54) creates also a nice pattern, but it is too much complicated compared to the other used patterns such as simple dotted, striped and checkered fill.

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One side note – the Mirror Type settings does not affect line fill or checkered fill, but can add another nice variation to the dotted fill when set to Both (55). It looks almost like a flowers.

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Back to the jagged fill – the rectangle over the first “T” letter needs a very small adjustment of the left bottom point (56).

After that, copy and paste this shape, rotate it by 45°, and adjust the points to again form a rectangle, this time over the second “T” letter (57). Hide the gridlines (View › Gridlines), and move this rectangle more to the left using the keyboard left arrow key to visually connect those two jagged patterns (58). After that, set the background color to No Color (Design › Page Color), and enjoy all the patterns.

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It is time to add some colors. Jump to the ribbon Design, and from the Colors dropdown, select for example Blue (59).

Click into the text box (60), and use the (æ) and (Æ) keys to move the cursor, and (Shift) + (æ) / (Æ) to select individual letters (61). Use the Font Color dropdown menu to set a different color for each letter. Use the most saturated colors from the middle (62). There are eight main colors for eight letters, so it should be easy.

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The second way to change the text color easily is to show the selection pane (Home › Select › Selection Pane), hide all the rectangles with the pattern fills, change the font color, and unhide the rectangles. In any case, you should end up with a picture as shown on the right (63). We can try another variant – over the black background.

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Select Home › Select › Select Objects tool (64), and select everything by drawing a selection rectangle over the whole page. Copy and paste those objects one more time by dragging them with the (Ctrl) key pressed (65).

Switch to the ribbon Insert › Shapes, select Rectangle (66), and draw it over the second label, a little bit bigger than the label itself (67). Using the Format ribbon, change the Shape Outline to No Outline, and Shape Fill to Black.

After that, move it below the text by right clicking and selecting Send to Back (68).

You can immediately see the result where the white pattern fills are clearly visible over the black background (69). Instead of defining every pattern fill from scratch, we can try to somehow adjust those patterns and turn them to black color.

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Select any rectangle, and with the Format Pane opened (70), select tab Picture (71), and open the Picture Correction settings (72). The Brightness slider controls exactly what it says – brightness.

Our fill is white, therefore increasing this value does not make any difference – the white is already the brightest value. On the other hand, decreasing the Brightness value darkens the whole image, and the white slowly turns darker hues of gray. If we decrease it all the way down to -100% (73), the white becomes black (74).

Since those settings are disabled once we select multiple objects, we need to change the Brightness for each rectangle individually. The result is shown on the left (75).

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Patterns text effect

The great news is that because we have used colors from the theme, a simple theme change from the ribbon Design › Colors immediately changes both labels (76). It also changes the mood of the message, and gives you an easy way to reuse this text effect in various places.

Changing the actual text is not that easy, as the overlaying rectangles needs to be adjusted to be only over the individual letters. And that´s it!

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Snow text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “SNOW”, with font Calibri Light, sized 140 pt (1). We need to start with some very light font as we will add quite a big outline later. For the same reason, open the Font settings (2), switch to the Advanced tab (3), and set the Spacing to Expanded by 15 pt (4). This way the letters will not touch each other once we add a thick outline.

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Because the label is quite big, it may be a good idea to change the page Orientation to Landscape (5) on ribbon Page Layout. To change the page background color, go to ribbon Design › Page Color (6), and select Blue-Gray color (7).

If not already selected, select the text box again, right click over the border and select Format Shape (8) to show the Format Pane (9). In there, select Text Options (10), Text Fill & Outline tab (11), keep the Text Fill to Solid Fill, but open the Color dropdown menu (12) and change the fill color to white. It is possible that with all the big outlines, the fill will not be visible, so we do not need to care about it very much, and we can quickly move to the outline settings.

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Change the Text Outline from No line to Solid line (13), Color to white (14), and Width to some bigger random number, for example 12 pt (15). Although the final effect should have the look as if it was made out of snowballs, we do not need to start with a dotted outline right away. Instead, we can set the Dash type to Long Dash Dot (16), which would not only add some random placed snowballs (17), but as well some random thicker parts (18).

To have everything rounded, make sure to have the Cap type set to Round, but it should be set by default.

Select the text box and duplicate it by moving it with the (Ctrl) key pressed or by pressing the (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) shortcuts. In order to see it better, keep it next to the previous text box for now (19). To get the random feel, we need to always change the outline Width to a different value, this time to 15 pt (20). We can also change the Dash type to Dash (21).

To see the final effect, move this text box over the first one (22), it should snap to its position automaticaly. The bigger random parts are done and we can move to the “snowflakes�.

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Duplicate the text box, and move it away for now (23). Set the Dash type to Round Dot (24), and increase the Width to 22 pt (25). This creates a lot of big snowflakes all over the text.

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However, it is still not enough. Duplicate this text box one more time, and this time change only the Width value. As always, it can really be any, but make it big enough. The screenshot on the right shows the result for the value of 27.25 pt (26). The reason why there is a decimal part is because if you use the arrows to tweak the values, the increment is 0.25 pt. It will look equally well for the integer value.

Moving all the text boxes to the same position one by one can be tricky. To make it easier, select ribbon Home › Select › Select Objects tool (27), and draw a big selection rectangle over the whole page to select everything. After that, jump to ribbon Format, and select Align › Align Center (28), and Align › Align Middle (29). The screenshot (30) shows all the four text boxes on top of each other. The label really looks like made of snowflakes, but it is flat and missing some depth. It is time to add some colors, highlights and shadows to spice it up a little.

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Duplicate the last text box again and change the Text Outline to Gradient Line (31). Make sure the Type is set to Linear (32), and the Angle to 90° (33) to have the gradient drawn from top to the bottom.

Select first gradient stop (34), and set the Color to Blue (35). Set the same color also for the second gradient stop (36). Select the first gradient stop again, and increase the Brightness value to 95% (37), which turn this color to almost white. For the second gradient stop (38), increase the Brightness to 70%.

Set the Width value to some value which we have not yet used, for example to 20 pt (39), move the text box over the other ones and send it to back by right clicking and selecting Send To Back (40). The gradient blue snowballs adds a little bit of depth to the effect (41).

Maintaining the order with all the text boxes is easier with the Selection pane (42). Show it on ribbon Home › Select › Selection Pane (43). There are four “white” text boxes (44), and the gradient one on the bottom named Text Box 5 (45). You can optionally rename those objects by double clicking on the items.

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The addition of a blue color is great, but we need more. Duplicate this text box again, and change the Width to 28.25 pt (46). Duplicate it one more time, and set the Width to 24.25 pt (47). This should be enough to add a sufficient amount of the blue. The preview (48) looks strange, as those two text boxes are still placed over the white ones.

To move it back, select both of them in the Selection pane with the (Ctrl) key pressed (49), and drag them all the way down with the mouse (50). The screenshot (51) shows the result. The effect is much richer and not flat anymore.

It is time to add some highlights. Duplicate one of the text boxes with the white dotted fill, and change the Text Outline to Gradient Outline (52). Keep the Type to Linear (53) and change the Angle to 70째 (54). Set both gradient stops to white color (55) and for the second gradient stop, increase the Transparency (56) to 100%. This way, a white-to-transparent gradient is drawn from the left top corner (where the highlight will be), to the right bottom corner. However, this text box alone would be invisible over the other text boxes as white + white = still white and white + transparent = white.

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To turn this effect into the highlight, change the Color to white (61), and also increase the Blur to 30 pt (62) to make it quite big. Move this text box over all the text boxes to see the highlight effect (63). If you find it too subtle, you can duplicate this object once more.

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On the Format pane, switch to the Text Effects tab (57), open the Shadow effect properties (58), and select any Preset (59) from the Outer category, for example Offset Center. The default black color nicely shows how the gradient fill transparency affects the shadow effect visibility. The shadow is strong where the fill is most visible (60), and fading towards the right bottom edge.

The last missing part is the shadow below the text. The previously used shadow effect is not applicable here as it draws the shadow over the whole layer, and we only want it under the letters. That it between the bottom part of the letters and the invisible ground. We have to adjust the text layer somehow to form a shadow.

Duplicate any text box (64), and change the Text Outline to dark blue color (65), Width to 30 pt (66) and Dash Type to Solid (67). Set the same color also for the Text Fill.

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To have a base for the shadow, we will sqish this text layer to be really low. Open the Font properties (68), select the Advanced tab (69), and set the Scale to 600% (70). The text becomes enourmously big (71), so we need to adjust the font size accordingly. Because we have made the text 6Ă— wider, we need to make the size 6Ă— smaller. The text size was 140 pt, the new size should be 140 / 6 = 23 pt (72). See how the distorted text matches the size of the white letters (73). Do not worry about the text being cropped (74), we will hide this base layer later anyway.

In the Format Pane, open the Text Effects tab (75), Reflection effect settings (76), and select any Preset (77).

Increase the Size all the way up to 100% (78), and raise the Distance to 50 pt (79) so the reflection is far enough from the text. Send this text box to the back, and move it with the keyboard arrow keys so the reflection is right below the letters (80). Increase the Blur to 80 pt (81) to make the shadow subtle enough. Do not worry about the dark blue distorted letters below the white label (82), we will hide them in a moment.

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After this, draw a rectangle over those two layers in a way that the reflection is visible, but the base layers are not (85).

Set the fill color the same as is used for the background, and show all the layers to see the final result (86). If you have followed the steps correctly, you shoud have a nice snow text effect.

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To make the shadow effect bolder, we can duplicate this layer once more (83), and set the font Scale to only 300%. Of course we need to adjust the font size to 140 / 3 = 46 pt. Keep all the Reflection settings the same, but adjust the Distance (84) so the text layer is still far enough from the effect. The screenshot on the left has all the other layers hidden using the Selection pane to see the result better.

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Since everything is made from text layers, the effect is fully dynamic. This means that you can show the Find and Replace dialog with (Ctrl) + (H) shortcut, search for the string “SNOW” (87) and replace it with anything you want (88) by pressing the Replace All button (89). Both highlight and shadow should match the new label. And that´s it!

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Fire text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “FIRE”, with font Arial, sized 72 pt (1).

Make it center aligned (2). Since a fire would not be very visible over the white background, we have to change it to black instead. Go to ribbon Design › Page Color (3), and select black color (4).

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It is good to keep the text box selected, as the black text becomes invisible over the black background. Open the Font Color dropdown menu (5) and select white color (6).

The next few steps may seem unrelated to our effect, but we need to somehow know which values to use, as we will not be able to adjust them once set. For this reason, we will add multiple rectangles with a notes. Select ribbon Insert › Shapes › Rectangle (7), and draw it somewhere in the document (8). Change the Shape Fill to white (9), and with the rectangle still selected, press the (¢Enter) key.

This will allow to write a text inside the rectangle (10). However, as you can see, there is not much space because of the margins (11). Right click over the shape and select Format Shape (12) to show the Format Pane.

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With the Format Pane visible (13), switch to the Text Options (14), Layout & Properties tab (15), and decrease all the margins to 0 mm (16). For this rectangle, set the Font Color to black (17). Setting it to Automatic makes no difference, as this color is adjusted accordingly to the black page background, and therefore it is white.

Open the Paragraph Settings (18), and in the dialog window, set the Spacing After to 0 pt (19), and Line Spacing to Single (20).

Duplicate this rectangle several times by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (21). As described in the introduction, we will pile up several drop shadow effects.

We do not know the values which we want to use, so we will start with some random ones – for example 2, 4, 6, etc... To make it even easier, we will keep the same values for Blur and Distance. Enter those values in the rectangles, and set the colors from white to yellow to red. All the used colors are the standard ones (22).

Do not worry if you are not sure why we have entered those values and set those colors. You will understand it in a minute.

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We have everything ready to start adding the effects. The helper rectangles are there to not only remind us the values, but also to use them to create groups.

Bear in mind that we always need to have at least two objects to create a group and to apply an effect.

Select both text box (23) and the first rectangle (24) with the (Shift) key pressed and group it together by right clicking and selecting Group › Group (25).

On the Format Pane, open the Effects tab (26), Shadow properties (27), and select Preset Offset Top (28). This preset sets the Size to 100% and Angle to 270°, which is fine, but we need to adjust the Transparency to 0% (29) to have the shadow bold enough. The Blur and Distance values should be set accordingly to our notes inside the rectangle – in this case, set it to 2 pt (30). The Color should be the same as the rectangle – white (31).

Keep this group selected, and click on the second rectangle (32) with the (Shift) key to add it to the selection. Group those two objects together by right clicking or switching to the Format ribbon and selecting Group › Group (33).

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lection, group it together, and again, add a shadow effect with the Transparency set to 0% (40), and set Blur and Distance to 6 pt (41) as says the note inside the rectangle. Set the color to orange (42).

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Select Effects tab (34), open Shadow properties (35), select the Preset Offset Top, decrease the Transparency to 0% (36), set the Blur and Distance value as our notes suggests – to 4 pt (37), and color to yellow (38). As you can see, the text now has the small white glow on the top and a bigger yellow one.

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Select the fourth rectangle (43) with the (Shift) key pressed and repeat the process again – group it together, add the Offset Top shadow effect, set the Transparency to 0% (44), Blur and Distance to 8 pt (45), and color to bright red (46).

For the last rectangle (47), the required steps should already become the routine.

Blur and Distance should be set to 10 pt (48) and color to dark red (49). The screenshot (50) shows the final effect, which indeed looks like a fire. It is, however, quite small. Let´s see if we can make it any bigger.

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Because the shadow effect basically blurs and moves the base object – our text, the text size and shape affects the final effect quite a lot. If we select the text box object (51), and change the Text Outline to Solid Line (52), Width to 2 pt (53), the fire effect is bolder (54). Another advantage of this added outline are the rounded corners (55), which looks more natural – with all the heat, the text should melt down, and the sharp corners would be gone.

However, to make the effect really bigger, we need to repeat the whole process one more time, and somehow guess the right values. To save your time, I have made a helper effect with the values 2, 4, 8 etc... using the same colors. This image (56) should serve as a base for our final effect. As you can see, the dark parts of this effects looks just fine (57), the size is good, but the yellow and orange parts are too close to the text and too small (58).

The screenshots on the right shows how this effect is affected by a different font – a font without an outline (59), and a font Arial Black (60). The later one has the red part nicely visible, but the yellow is still too close to the text and too small.

We should avoid this for the final effect.

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After looking at the screenshots, it is time to get back to work. With the (Shift) key pressed, select the text box (61), and every rectangle (62), but not the group (63) itself. Copy everything and paste it with the (Ctrl) + (C) and (Ctrl) + (V) shortcuts. As we did get rid of the groups, the shadow effects also disappears.

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To solve the “small yellow part� problem, we will add another steps in between the white, yellow, orange and red rectangles.

Duplicate the rectangles to have three new (64), and set the colors to light yellow (65), light orange (66), and light red (67). Enter a values with growing increment, that is: 2+2 = 4 (68), +3 = 7 (69), +4 = 11 (70) etc. To spice up the effect, we can add another last step in the dark violet color (71).

The next steps are the very same as we have used in the previous effect, only this time, we have to create nine groups instead of five, and of course add nine shadow effects. To keep the shadow colors the same as are used for the rectangles, check the color before setting the other values. A quick comparison (72) shows that the selected light yellow color is not the right one. The screenshot (73) shows the final effect.

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The text effect is complete and we want to get rid of the helper rectangle shapes.

Selecting them and deleting them is not a good idea as this also deletes the groups and removes the shadow effect. We need to show the Selection pane (74) – on the ribbon Home › Select › Selection Pane, and hide all the rectangles by clicking on the eye symbol (75). Make sure to not hide the groups, and keep the text box visible (76).

To make the effect more visible and bolder, we can place a lighter background below the text. From the Insert › Shapes menu, select Oval and draw it over the text (77). Set the Shape Outline to No Outline and Shape Fill to darker desaturated red (78).

With the Format pane visible, open the Effects tab (79), Soft Edges effect settings (80), and increase the Size to 80 pt (81), to make the circle blurred (82).

After this, send this circle to back by right clicking and selecting Send to Back, or by dragging this item inside the Selection pane (83). Because the fire created with the shadow effects is slightly transparent, it will be more visible over the lighter background.

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As a final step, we can spice up the effect with random bright sparkles around the text. Draw a Oval from the menu Insert › Shapes with the (Shift) key pressed to form a circle (84), and set the Shape Outline to No Outline and Shape Fill to some orange or yellow color. Use the Soft Edges effect to make this circle blurred (85).

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Duplicate this object several times by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (86), resize it with the (Shift) key pressed, tweak the Soft Edges Size value, and optionally adjust the Fill Transparency (87). The final result is shown on the screenshot (88).

The text is still placed in the text box, and it is fully editable. Because this time we have used only once instance of the text box, changing the message is as easy as clicking into the text box with the mouse and typing a different word. If a different text is not enough, you can even change a font or use the Insert › Symbol dialog to insert for example a fire symbol (89) from the font Segoe UI Symbol. If you still have energy, try creating a blue fire effect – I bet it will look pretty cool. And that´s it!

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Carbon Fiber text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “Carbon Fiber”, with font Franklin Gothic Medium, sized 72 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3). The selected font does not contain a bold variant, so Word simply makes everything a little bit bolder. It is not an ideal case, but it works. Just to make sure that everything is aligned nicely, we can jump to ribbon Format › Align Text, and change it to Middle (4).

Right click over the text box border and select Format Shape (5) to show the Format Pane. Switch to the Text Options (6) › Text Fill & Outline tab (7), and change the Text Outline to Gradient Line (8).

Keep the Type to Linear (9) and Angle to 90° (10) to have it drawn from the top to the bottom.

We only need two gradient stops, but there may be more. Delete the unused ones by dragging them out of the gradient preview (11) and increase the Width to 20 pt (12). Select the second gradient stop (13) and change the color to Black (14). For the first gradient stop (15), change the color to a very dark gray (16).

Our base layer is almost done, but the edges are too much skewed (17).

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Duplicate this text box and move it to the same position as the previous one.

Decrease the line Width to only 14 pt (20), and we will make the gradient fill much lighter, almost white. Select the second gradient stop (21), and change the color to light gray (22). For the first gradient stop (23), change the color to white (24). The gap inside the “C” (25) letter may be distracting – how to “fill” it?

Using a rectangle with the same gradient fill (26) is not an option – the gradient is drawn in a different size and therefore does not fit.

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To fix the big edges, change the line Join type to Mitter (18), which makes them smaller (19). It would also be possible to set it to Round, but because the selected font is more angular than rounded, it does not look as good.

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The best way to proceed is to duplicate the text box one more time (27), and insert a Middle Dot symbol (28) from the Insert › Symbol › More Symbols menu.

We can resize this text box to make it narrower, but keep the same height. Move it over the first text box (29), and optionally adjust the Width settings (30) to cover this hole.

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Duplicate this text box one more time by dragging it with the (Ctrl) key pressed (31) to cover the small hole inside the “o” letter. To quickly select the text box with a white gradient fill, click somewhere around the end of the text (32), click over the dotted text box outline (33), and duplicate this text box. Move it to the left and to the top to have it aligned with the other text boxes properly.

For this text box, set the Text Outline to No Line, and Text Fill to Gradient Fill (34). As usual, use the gradient fill with Type set to Linear (35) and Angle set to 90° (36). The second gradient stop (37) should be set to black, the first gradient stop (38) to some dark gray color (39).

This will create an effect of light shining from the top (40).

We want to have a shadow below this label, but adding a drop shadow effect to any text box would cause a misalignment of the text. For this reason, we will use a separate, helper text box. Duplicate any text box and move it away for now (41).

Set the Text Fill to Solid Fill (42) with black color (43), and set also the Text Outline to Solid line (44) with black color (45). Set the Width to 10 pt (46) to keep it smaller than the actual label.

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With the Format pane still opened, select the Effects tab (47), open the Shadow properties (48), and select the Offset Bottom preset (49). The Angle and Size settings are fine, but the other values needs some adjustments. Decrease the Transparency to 0% (50), increase the Blur to 22 pt (51) and also increase the Distance to 10 pt (52). With those settings, the shadow is pretty bold and big (53), but bear in mind it will be displaced over the dark background later.

Move this text box over the all the other text boxes, and send it back by right clicking and selecting Send to Back (54). To have a better overview of all the layers, select Home › Select › Selection Pane to show the Selection pane (55). To rename an object, double click on the name (56), type a new name and confirm with a (¢Enter) key. To make sure that everything is aligned perfectly, select all layers except the shadow one (57) by clicking on the items with the (Ctrl) key pressed, and select ribbon Format › Align › Align Middle (58). Click on the text boxes covering the holes (Text Box 4 and 5) with the (Ctrl) key to remove it from selection, and select Align › Align Center (59). The text effect is done and we can move to the background part.

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For the background carbon fiber pattern, we need to be really precise. The first step to increase the accuracy is to show the grid – on the ribbon View › Gridlines (60). However, this alone is not enough.

Jump to the ribbon Page Layout › Align › Grid Settings (61), and uncheck the Snap objects to other objects (62). This will make sure that the objects will really snap only to the grid. Do not forget to enable it after you are done.

Open the ribbon Insert › Shapes, and draw a new Rectangle sized 2 × 4 boxes (63). Set the Line to No Line, and Fill to Gradient Fill (64). Keep the Type to Linear (65) and Angle to 90° (66). For the second gradient stop (67), set the color to almost black one (68), and for the first gradient stop (69), set the color to a lighter gray (70). Add a new gradient stop by clicking in the gradient preview (71), and change the color to gray (72). This will make the shading look like rounded object instead of flat.

Duplicate this rectangle two more times (73) and align them as shown. For the precise alignment, do not use mouse, but keyboard arrow keys instead. Zoom in as much as you can to see if there is no gap in between the objects.

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If you have read the introduction thoroughly, you should already know that we need a square-sized pattern. To prove it, I have copied the objects several times (74) to demonstrate that the square (75) when repeated really forms this pattern. But our three rectangles do not form a square, we need to crop them.

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The Crop function is only possible for bitmap images, so we will convert our pattern to bitmap first. It should be fine, as the final pattern is always a bitmap.

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Select all three rectangles (76), copy them into the clipboard with (Ctrl) + (C), and select ribbon Home › Paste › Paste Special (77). In the Paste Special dialog (78), select Picture (PNG) (79).

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The inserted picture (80), may break the layout (81). Use the Layout Options menu to change the text wrapping to In Front of Text (82) to not only fix the layout, but to allow moving the image around the document freely.

The Crop function (83) on the Format ribbon offers several options. The standard Crop function (84) may seem fine, but it is not very precise as it does not snap to the grid. We need something better.

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The Crop to Shape is a great function, but it unfortunately does not have a square shape available, only rectangle, which would not affect the cropped shape at all. This leads to the last option – Aspect Ratio (85). Selecting Square 1:1 (86) automatically adjusts the crop boundaries to square (87), and all you have to do is press the (¢Enter) key to confirm it.

Of course we can move this crop rectangle around, but there should be no reason for it, as the square is already perfectly centered.

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Once cropped, keep this object selected and copy it into the clipboard with the (Ctrl) + (C) shortcut. Use the Selection pane to hide the three helper rectangles (88) and also the image with the pattern (89) by clicking on the eye symbols (90).

After that, switch to the ribbon Insert › Shapes and draw a really big rectangle over the almost whole page. In the Format pane (91), change the Line to No Line and Fill to Picture or texture fill (92). Select Insert picture from Clipboard (93), and the rectangle should immediately be filled with our pattern.

Check the Tile picture as texture (94) to not only see once instance of the pattern, but to have it repeated.

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The pattern is probably still too big. Adjust the Scale X and Scale Y values to some smaller number, for example 20% (95). Bear in mind that Word adjusts the size even during the typing. This means that if you select the old value (100%), and start typing “20”, you may get a little lag as Word thinks for a second that you want set it to 2%, and redraws the screen.

Send this rectangle to back, and duplicate it one more time. We will use the same rectangle to darken the edges of the page, leaving only the middle part more visible. To make it, change the Fill to Gradient Fill (96), but this time, set the Type to Radial (97). Open the Direction dropdown menu and select From Center. For the first gradient stop (98), set the color to black and increase the Transparency to 100% – this will be the transparent middle part. For the second gradient stop (99), set the color to some dark gray (100) and keep the Transparency to 0% (101).

Finally use the Selection pane to move this rectangle with a radial gradient fill below the text layers, but over the pattern fill rectangle (102). You can optionally rename also those objects, and that´s it!

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Estimated Completion Time: X Minutes Difficulty:  Learn how to create: •

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Chrome text effect

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Start with a blank document, create Text Box with no fill and no outline, and type “CHROME”, with font Calibri, sized 72 pt (1). Make it Bold (2) and center aligned (3).

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The chrome labels on cars have often tight spacing, sometime with the letters completelly connected. To adjust the spacing, open the Font settings dialog (X), jump to the Advanced tab (X), and set the Spacing to Condensed (X) by 5 pt (X). That should make the spacing much smaller, but there is still a small gap between each letter.

Right click over the text box border and select Format Shape to show the Format pane (X). Open the Text Options (X), Text Fill & Outline tab (X), and change the Text Fill to Gradient fill (X). Keep the Type to Linear (X) and Angle to 90° (X) to have the gradient drawn from the top to the bottom. All the four gradient stops use standard colors, we start with a light blue (X) resembling the sky, going to a white (X) to suggest the horizon, going again to light blue (X) and darker blue (X) as if it was reflecting the ground.

Most chrome effects uses a yellow color for the ground (i.e. desert sand), but it looks too cheap.

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Because the chrome is almost like a mirror, we want a strong transition between the ground and the sky, not a blurred one.

To do so, grab the third gradient stop and move it more to the left (X), until it will cover the second gradient stop and create a sharp transition between the white and light blue color (X).

On the Format pane, jump to the Text Effects tab (X), open the 3D Format settings (X), and select Top bevel: Circle (X). The Width and Height values (X) are automatically calculated based on the selected font, and cannot be changed.

Open the Material dropdown menu and select Metal (X), as chrome really is a metal. This will make all the reflections much stronger (X). We can also change the Lighting to Chilly (X), which has a slight blue tint. This tint mostly affects the shadows (X) and creates a more realistic look. However, the direction from the light shines is wrong. It shines from the left side (X), while it should be shining from the top – as the real sun does. To fix it, increase the Lighting Angle value (X) until there is a big highlight on the top of the letters (X). A value of 110° seems to be just fine.

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The 3D effect is still little bit boring, but there is not much else what can be set there. What about to play with the text outline? Move back to the Text Fill & Outline tab (X), change the Text Outline to Solid Line (X), and select a blue color (X). If we increase the Width value (X), we can see an interesting effect. The outline does not increase the overall text width as usual, but stays “inside of the text� (X). The Width set to 4,25 pt looks nice as it overlaps with the 3D border and forms an additional highlight inside (X), but a pure blue outline does not look like a chrome.

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For this reason, change the Text Outline to Gradient Line (X), and set a gradient from a dark blue color (X) to keep the nice blue tint from the sky (X), to white color in the middle (X). For the third gradient stop (X), select More Colors from the Colors dropdown, set the dark violet color (X). Switch to the Custom tab (X), and drag the lightness slider more to the top (X), to get a ligther violet color. The final RGB values are shown on the screenshot: 133, 133, 173. Notice how the bottom part of the letter have now a nice violet tint (X).

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If the bottom part of the letters is too bright, try moving the third gradient stop more to the left (99). The gradient outline makes the effect more interesting and realistic looking, but there is still something missing. If you look at a chrome object, it not only reflects the environment, just like our text does, but also the object itself. We cannot really simulate this advanced 3D effect inside Word, but we can at least add some additional reflections.

To do so, copy the text box one more time (X), change the Text Outline to No Line and Text Fill to Solid Fill (X) with white color (X). To make this text box visible over the white background, I have temporarily placed a violet rectangle below this text (X).

If we increase the fill Transparency to 50% (X), the 3D highlights (X) and shadows (X) seems to have a different transparency – they are more visible compared to the fill (X). This is great, because we can increase the Transparency to for example 85% (X), where the fill is almost invisible (X), but the highlights (X) still affects the background quite a lot.

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the end

the end