The Professional Photoshop Book - Volume 7 2015

ligatures and iterations of the same letter,

designers should look forward to a bright future

for more dynamic options and end results.”

Perhaps it is because we are becoming so

tech-obsessed with short attention spans, but

having “condensed information that is easy to digest

is definitely a plus these days,” adds Nickerson. This

is demonstrated, he says, by “the vast amount of

sans serif fonts: the simplest letterform.” For Hau,

it’s “the resurgence of normcore (aka Hipster 2.0: the

Second Coming),” which has “brought back a lot of

ideas from the Nineties and Noughties; stark,

inoffensive and neutral typefaces kerned tightly,

which are either all caps or no caps.” So perhaps –

despite the rules and the flourishes, the terminology

and technicalities of typography – minimalism is

where it’s really at.

The main purpose of

typography is to inform and

hopefully enhance an idea. It’s our

way of putting crazy ideas into a

somewhat tangible form

BRANDON NICKERSON / WWW.BNICKS.COM

BART VAN DELFT EXPLAINS HOW YOU CAN ADD DEPTH TO

YOUR WORDS. FIRST, HE SAYS, GET YOUR CONCEPT CLEAR

EXTRUDE 3 D TEXT IN PHOTOSHOP

01

INTO THE THIRD DIMENSION

Start off with a texture, says van Delft,

then create your text with “a nice variety of

fonts or just one really beautiful one. Then apply

the 3D effect and play a little with the depth of

the extrusion and lighting. Once you have the

perfect position of your text you can start

adding the texture to the sides of the element.

Try to make it look natural.”

02

SHADE YOURSELF

“Now it’s time to make it look a little bit

cooler,” he says, “so we are going to add some

shadows and extra manual lighting. I added a

light in the upper-left corner and a shadow in the

lower-right corner, these layers are on top of the

rest. After this step I have added a drop shadow

to the text and a manual long shadow to both

parts of the text layer.”

03

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

“This is where the fun starts; we are

going to freestyle. In this example I have

created a little extra depth to the scene by

adding elements in front and behind the text. I

have gone for a little smoke and some rocks to

make it look more dramatic. The depth effect is

enhanced by making the elements close to the

camera a little blurry. Now imagine these layers

in a website moving slightly from each other

depending on your mouse movement.”

are redefining the acceptable stylisations of

typography. There is a combination of several

hundred years of experimentation and discovery

that is now readily available through the Internet.

In lettering, nearly every style is flourishing

including scripts, three-dimensional type

extrusions, hand-drawn elements and even

physical, sculptural letterforms that are being

built and photographed. None of these are really

new, but the combinations coming about are

novel and in flux. In digital development, web

fonts are one of the most dramatic and helpful

additions. Many of these options are free and

easily accessible. Typographic translation across

platforms is also getting better and more user

friendly overall. With the beneficial advent of

Opentype that can support multiple glyphs,

KaWaii Desu: Andy Hau knows that “Photoshop aficionados hate it

because it can look unconvincing,” but he is a big fan of drop shadows. “S ometimes, even the faintest of drop shadow can help enormously to

bring out the legibility and readability of your text,” he says

Lathe: from Futura “as IAlexander wanted to give the font a new twist and add to Klement created his custom typeface Lathe

its visual language,” he explains

©

Andy

Hau

© A

lex

ander

Klement

© Martin S

chmetzer

Pro type techniques

The Professional Photoshop Book 155

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