Manipulating Typography: Helvetica to Hellvetica
You need to redesign your blogs header and you know that Helvetica strikes your fancy but you also know it’s overused and plus, your blog is about the psychological effects of Duke Nukem on the minds of pre-adolescents and you’d like to have the header text radiate some Nukem-ish flare, right? Well, good news, you can stop spending hours surfing through dafont.com looking for the perfect font.
Pick a basic serif or sans-serif and manipulate to your hearts content. Below, I’ve chosen the Helvetica font and erased, moved and cut the individual letters, then styled the whole thing to create three different “fonts.”
The Eraser is Your Friend
…so is the marquee/selection tools, the delete key and the pencil/pen/brush tools. I can’t tell you how many times I forget this. A key distinction that separates good designers from great designers is that great designers aren’t afraid to cut, hack, chop, move, rotate and erase until the desired effect is achieved.
For instance, take a look at the logo to the right:
- simple, Helvetica font
- the “V” is rotated to match the “H”
- the “V” and “H” are married
- the whole thing is rotated to level the “V”
- the top and bottom are trimmed
- some good old outer glow, pattern overlay and satin (Adobe Photoshop) to spice it up
- throw the name on top and there you have it, instant logo.
Destruction can sometimes breed beauty.
I’d love to see some typography based designs you’ve done and are particularly proud of. Please, share.
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In an era of “unoriginal” ideas, a twist on what already works is refreshing.
@Typography Digest - Hello Spammy!
@Stephanie - Wait till you see how I make lemonade.
Jay, I assume you did this in Illustrator?
any more thoughts about how to deal with font tweaking for beginners? I hate illustrator, much more proficient with PS.
If it were a real logo, I would have done it in Illustrator, but it’s not, so I didn’t. All PS.
Tweaking for beginners? This was a beginner tip, and a reminder for seasoned designers. Here’s another though: remember, words are made of letters, so put each letter on its own layer and play.
My man, thanks dude.
P.S dig this site for the top 80 PS text effects on the web
lawton chiless last blog post..No Storyteller Left Behind
Very nice find, Lawton.
You’ve just contributed to many hours of my time being lost to the PS ether.
jay, also check out aiburn.com and vectips.com these are pretty groovy too.
and there’s always psdtuts.com which has one of the fastest growing sites i’ve ever come across.
Thanks.
PSDTuts is very well done. The articles are on point and the tutorials are really top notch.
Jay, is that tidbit at the end , i can put that into any post right? i see people doing the white bar thing. so i guess i’ll make my background white?
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