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About this lesson
Learn this creative text format often found on flyers, and a clever “rubber stamp” to use on documents.
Exercise files
Download this lesson’s related exercise files.
Word Art - Exercise.docx93 KB Word Art - Exercise Solution.docx
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Quick reference
Word Art
An artful and creative text format, also known as Typography.
When to use
Use to place a banner across a flyer and many other ideas. You can invent “rubber stamps” electronically to stamp an invoice.
Instructions
To begin, select the text: Notice to All Employees!
- Click Insert and click the Word Art button:
- Choose from the gallery to begin a design.
- The Drawing Tools ribbon opens at the top of your screen.
- Use the tools in the Word Art Styles group to change your design:
- Use the Text Effects, Transform button to apply curves to your design
Hints & tips
- Use Ctrl-Z to "undo" a step and reapply a new one.
- 00:04 Word Art is something that has been with Microsoft Word for decades.
- 00:09 But if you are a student of graphic design,
- 00:12 you are familiar with the term typography.
- 00:15 The style or appearance of text, also refers to the art,
- 00:18 word art of working with text.
- 00:21 As the rule goes, we always select the text we want to work with.
- 00:25 And notice my Menu bar pops up and I already have Text Effects and Typography.
- 00:30 But let me tell you something, it's not always there.
- 00:33 It kind of depends on what else has been going on with your document.
- 00:36 So in this case, it is there so I can go ahead and click this.
- 00:40 I have a gallery up on top and then options down below.
- 00:43 Well, let's go and find this somewhere else, okay?
- 00:46 Again, I'm clicked on my text, I'll go to the Insert ribbon,
- 00:51 on the far right hand side is a Text area, and the middle button says Word Art.
- 00:56 When I activate that, there's the gallery, the same examples.
- 00:59 I'll go ahead and choose one of these and
- 01:02 instantly I have a brand new ribbon Shape Format.
- 01:05 Well now it's just a matter of digging around in here, experimenting with these,
- 01:09 applying these, and seeing which ones you like.
- 01:12 I'm going to stay right here in the center where it says Word Art Styles.
- 01:16 We do have quick styles, that is the gallery I already chose.
- 01:20 And then we go into detail.
- 01:22 Here we could color the fill color inside the text.
- 01:25 The next one is the border color, Text Outline.
- 01:30 The next one is the text effects.
- 01:33 So if I want to apply a shadow to this, to add depth,
- 01:37 we can apply a reflection to this, make it glow.
- 01:42 Make a bevel effect, add a 3D rotation to this.
- 01:46 Although even though I'm floating around, I can't really see anything changing.
- 01:50 So I'm going to push pause just for a second and reset.
- 01:53 Click out of this, Ctrl Z, go back to my original text.
- 01:58 Insert Word Art, choose a Word Art.
- 02:02 I'm going to go right back to my Text Effects, and
- 02:05 then go straight to Transform, see if it will bend.
- 02:09 There it is. I just had to click it by mistake.
- 02:12 I did want to show you one other thing up there, when I'm trying to apply things and
- 02:16 it's covering up all my text.
- 02:17 You can float your mouse on the dot, dot, dot at the bottom of these menus and
- 02:21 move them out of your way so you can actually see everything.
- 02:24 And then we have a scroll bar within.
- 02:26 Let's try the bevel this time.
- 02:27 I want to put a bevel on here.
- 02:29 Can't really see what's happening, grab those dot,
- 02:32 dot, dots, move it up out of the way, use a scroll bar, and then apply a bevel.
- 02:37 Great, let's move on.
- 02:37 Let's show you a professional way to use this.
- 02:40 Often in the old days we had these stampers.
- 02:42 So, in the old days we would stamp an invoice paid in full.
- 02:47 Well, you can do that electronically with Word Art.
- 02:49 So, I already placed some text down here, Paid in Full.
- 02:52 The typography does show up on my screen, so I'll go ahead and choose a red one.
- 02:57 Let me select this again, Text Effects.
- 03:00 Notice when I use the typography on the mini bar,
- 03:02 I didn't get my Shape Format ribbon.
- 03:04 I find that very interesting.
- 03:06 So, you'll figure out which way works for you if you want all the options or not.
- 03:10 Okay, in this case, I do want a larger one.
- 03:14 Okay, I want my outline to be a bright red, and I want the fill color.
- 03:19 Let's see, I want a little glow on this one.
- 03:23 And then I want the font to be quite larger.
- 03:26 So I can do that on my keyboard or I can come up here and I can just choose 36.
- 03:31 In my opinion, the Insert and the Word Art, and
- 03:34 then have the Shape Format just offer me all the tools is kind of cool, because I
- 03:38 think I have more options using the Shape Format than I do on the right click.
- 03:43 Regardless, how you do it, there is a professional use for this.
- 03:46 There is a fun use for this on flyers and it all depends on what you need.
- 03:52 But the important thing is get in there and practice,
- 03:54 you'll be amazed at what you can find out.
- 03:56 Also, you can go online and look up the word typography and
- 04:00 see some very cool examples of designs online.
- 04:03 Have fun with it.
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