Today, I want to teach you how to create a unique type design in Photoshop. You can use this design as your desktop wallpaper, as a background design or even as poster art. This is an intermediate Photoshop tutorial where you will be playing with different fonts of varying sizes and weights until you come up with a final design that you are happy with. This tutorial isn't too difficult however, it is slightly time consuming when it comes to placing all the text.
Here is the final design that we will be creating:
Step 1: The Background
Open Adobe Photoshop. Create a new document that is 1920px by 1200px. Fill the background with a dark grey colour. I used #242424.
Duplicate the layer. Go to Filter -> Artistic -> Film Grain... and set the Grain=0, Highlight Area=0 and the Intensity=0. Decrease this second layers opacity to 50%.
Create a third layer that is blank. Set the foreground-background colours to white and black. Select your Gradient Tool and set it to Radial. Draw out a circular gradient from the center of you page to the edge. Set the opacity of this third layer to 15%.
Here is a short video tutorial to help guide you through the background set up:
Step 2: Adding The Main Type
Select any sans-serif font that you want to use as your main text. I chose to use Helvetica Bold and I stretched it a little bit to make the font a little taller.
Position your words in the middle of your stage and increase the font size. I set my font size to 310px however, the font size that you use may be different depending on the length of the word that you are using and the amount of space that you want it to take up on the stage. Decrease your type layers opacity to 23%.
You should now have something like this:
Step 3: Adding The Overlayed Text
Here comes the tricky part that is slightly time consuming. Go to Layer –> New –> Group. Using the Type Tool, start adding words to your design. Try to use different fonts, different weights and different sizes for your words to make your design more interesting. I used Arial, Arial Black, Helvetic, Helvetica Bold, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Impact and a few others. Continue filling your design with words until you are happy with the shape of your design.
When you're done, merge the group of words by going to Layer -> Merge Group. Duplicate this layer. Make one of the layers invisible while keeping the other one visible.
Select your large text layer, hold CTRL (Command on a MAC) and click on the layers thumbnail to load it as a selection. Now, select your visible merged words layer and go to Select -> Inverse. Delete the words that are outside your large text on this words layer. You should end up with something like this:
Step 4: Creating the Final Effect
Now, make the second merged words layer visible. Decrease its layer Opacity to 23%. Go to Layer -> Layer Style -> Colour Overlay. Set the Colour Overlay to #969fa2. Finally, with that same layer still selected, go to Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur... and set the Angle=0 and the Distance=6px. That's it! Now you have your personalized creative type design.