I was asked the other day by a colleague what I thought the best way of creating lettering for a display title was.
Presuming you actually want to make it yourself (i.e. and not use a website like http://www.instantdisplay.co.uk/alphabetsets.htm), then my actual preferred piece of software is Microsoft PowerPoint. The steps I follow are:
- Measure how much space you have for your lettering. The simplest way is to just get a couple of sheets of A4 paper and count how many of them in landscape orientation are needed to go from one side of the display board to the other (remembering to leave room for the border).
- Choose a suitable font for your lettering. I often find that a fancy font works well for a display title as it helps to grab the viewer's attention. Fonts can easily be downloaded for free from a range of websites, although my personal favourite is http://www.dafont.com/ as it lets you search for fonts based on particular styles. Remember that somebody will be cutting this lettering out so try to choose a font that isn't too busy around the edges and that doesn't have lots of tiny holes in it.
- Open PowerPoint and insert some Word Art text containing your title in your desired font style.
- Change the fill colour (perhaps using a gradient going from a lighter to a darker shade) and outline colour (if you so want to) of the Word Art.
- Resize the Wrd Art until it is the desired size. Holding down CTRL+SHIFT whilst moving a corner handle will resize it in all dimensions at the same time. You will likely need to keep dragging it around the slide until it is the correct height and to check that it can be spread out over the correct number of slides horizontally (as a normal 4:3 slide prints landscape on A4 paper).
- Change the outline thickness if you want to - perhaps to make it easier for cutting out.
- Print the Word Art title out. Drag the lettering so the first few letters fit on the slide and click print. Next, drag the lettering to the left until the next letters appear on the slide and print them. Repeat until all the letters have appeared on the slide and you have printed them.
A few extra tips I've learnt over the years that are also helpful are:
- print your lettering out onto card to make it more stable - especially if it contains lots of fiddly edges;
- if you want your lettering to be exactly the same colour as the paper work for the display is backed in: fill the lettering in white in PowerPoint (as this won't print out), set the outline colour to black and flip the Word Art horizontally before printing it out onto coloured paper (so that when you cut it out the outline edges which you cut around don't show up when the lettering is looked at on the other side);
- cut out your lettering before you laminate it and cut it out again - this stops the edges of it fraying over time;
- draw temporary white rectangular boxes over letters that you don't want to be printed out from a slide (e.g. half of a letter that is getting cut off the edge);
- save your lettering PowerPoint file - just in case you need to use again (e.g. in case you measured the display incorrectly).
I'm sure there are many other ways people have to make lettering, but I find this way the best because: every member of staff has access to PowerPoint (unlike Publisher) and Word Art can be enlarged up to very big sizes (unlike in Word).
Please let me know if you've found these instructions helpful!
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