My love affair with typefaces probably began in high school I wasn’t much of an artist but I loved what a typeface could do to a book cover, a magazine cover, or a painted sign. For years I collected books on typefaces, used those expensive rub on letters to create advertising designs because I couldn’t afford typesetting equipment. Today, creating text as art on a Mac requires two things. Some taste, and the ability to point and click.
Art Text Is Text Art
The absolute easiest to use and most useful Mac app to turn plain, ordinary text into works of typeface art is Art Text. What it does to type and graphic elements is nothing short of astounding. Typefaces on your Mac come alive in exciting ways.
Here’s a sample from the Art Text Template Gallery (loaded with pre-built examples of typeface and images).
A similar template exists for buttons and other graphic design elements.
The beauty of these results is that the entire creation process is handled in real time, point and click.
Art Text has an interface that is plain simple to use, though trial and error is the normal procedure. It comes with hundreds o templates and styles to get started, but each is completely customizable. Change font, change element, change background and foreground colors, mix and match materials, textures, and add multiple layers.
I don’t think there’s a Mac app that creates such designs in less time, though I’ve found that I spend too much time in trial and error mode (maybe that’s why I wasn’t accepted to an art school way back when– someone noticed my true talent would be in trial and error).
Art Text uses the fonts installed on your Mac, including those with graphic elements. Textures and materials are built-in (by the hundreds) and completely customizable so you can create your own. Text can be bent and warped along vector lines.
The finished result can be saved in standard Mac and PC image file formats from TIFF, JPEG, PDF, EPS, GIF, and PNG, and then dropped into all popular Mac apps that handle graphics.
Think of Art Text as an affordable TypeStyler. Most of the same bells and whistles, but $150 less.
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